Water bottles

Three different water bottles.
Click to enlarge.

Water is a very important item to carry with you during a bicycle touring adventure. One of the ways to carry water is to use water bottles.

Most people seem to purchase water bottles from their local bike shop but there are different options available too.

The bottles available at your local bike shop generally work well and last for quite a long time. Usually there are two sizes available. The smallest size (the middle bottle in the picture to the left) holds approximately 500 ml of water. A larger size is usually available as well that holds approximately 750 ml of liquid. The left most bottle is about the same size to give you a comparison although it isn't an example of a typical bike shop bottle. As long as I can safely place the bottle on the bike then I usually carry the larger 750 ml bottles.

The left most bottle is my preferred bicycle touring water bottle. It's made by Nalogene and has several features that I like. First of all it holds approximately 750 ml of water so by using the bottle I give up nothing compared to the large bike shop bottles. Secondly it features a protective cap cover that keeps mud, road kill and other icky items of that nature away from the place where I drink from the bottle. The bottle is made of a very tough material and the last key feature that I like to mention is that the bottle features a very wide mouth making cleaning easier and allowing my water filter to attach directly to the water bottle.

The right most bottle in the picture is a large bottle of bottled water like you might find in gas stations, grocery stores and other food locations. Topeak is an example of one company that makes a water bottle holder that allows you to carry even larger water bottles on your bike. I actually own a Topeak water bottle holder but I haven't yet used it on a tour so I can't comment on how well it works. I do like the idea of being able to carry 3.750 litres of water in water bottle cages rather then the 2.250 litres I've used in the past (calculated using two 1.5 litre bottles and one 750 ml bottle).

Many touring specific bikes have the ability to carry three water bottle cages. Two are the standard cages located inside the triangular part of the frame. The third cage hangs below the downtube requiring caution to make sure that the wheel does not catch on the bottle causing steering issues.

Of course there are other ways to carry water including water bladders and hydration packs. I will discuss those in another article.

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