This afternoon  I was packing M&S goodies into my rucksack and the dry bag I use on the back rack in this inclement weather (both from Alpkit, by the way, and surviving well, both around town and at Glastonbury) when the nice man at the checkout (Marks in Enniskillen have remarkably nice people at their checkouts) asked whether I wasn’t afraid that it would make my bike very wobbly to ride.

Now of all the myriad things I worry about, instability owing to moderate grocery haulage hasn’t so far featured very prominently.  Of course there have been times when I’ve been carried away by spatial optimism, overriding the little brain mechanism that tells me pretty infallably how much I can fit on my back and carrier, and ended up having to balance an evil carrier bag on the handlebars.  This isn’t recommended,  even apart from environmental considerations, unless the journey from the supermarket to your house is a gentle and unbroken curve with no need to stop, start again or turn in any radical manner.  But this was an extremely moderate load, undertaken primarily to use this week’s £5 off voucher and including no additional bags nor any ironing board, oil painting* or other sail-like structure liable to catch the prevailing wind and lead me where I would not go.  In these happy circumstances, so long as the bag is well bungeed to the rack and is itself strong enough to bear its contents (a post from eighteen months ago or so recounts my picking up potatoes from the middle of the road escapades),  there’s no reason for any unusual wobbles.

Front carriers can be a bit trickier, as we found when G and I rode hired bikes with front baskets to the Co-op  in Lucca and filled them with Tavernello and parmigiano.  Distinct meanderings there, and we hadn’t even broached the wine cartons… I suppose it’s simply the fact that anything on the front compromises the handlebars, whereas at the back the worst it can do is weigh down your back wheel so that, with a heavy load, you can relax at the traffic lights and find your front wheel making a bid for the stars.

A bit like this. The bike pictures, by the way, on this and the last post are from Jan Boonstra’s amazing collection of bicycle gifs.

*As we once (in Italy, of course) saw being transported by bike, under the rider’s arm.