New Bar Bag – CamelChops Blimp 0.5 Review
Living where I do, there’s not many days you can chance riding without having a rain jacket along. Over the years, I’ve just popped one into my jersey pocket, but recently I lost one. This prompted me to think about a bar bag – unfortunately, I made the poor decision to buy a cheap one off eBay – it didn’t take long before it fell apart, but it did convince me of its usefulness.
Looking around for a decent replacement, I noticed that quite a few companies make a similar shape and sized cylindrical bar bag. These include Straight Cut’s Bagel Bag), Restrap’s Canister Bag and even classic saddle makers Brooks have a similar bag.
I settled for a CamelChops Blimp 0.5 bag. It’s a 2.8 litre capacity, 220 mm x 120 mm diameter round bag, a cut down version of their Blimp 2.0, without the strapping on the front and the end pockets.
Camelchops are also quite close to me, based in Marykirk, Aberdeenshire. Delivery time was stated as 14 days from order, as they’re made to order, and the bag arrived pretty much on time.
First Impressions
The bag arrived via Royal Mail, well packaged. First impressions are that it’s well constructed of Cordura-type fabric. There’s a stiffener in the body of the bag to keep its round shape. The straps have a clasp-type fastener and there’s 3 strap positions either side of the centre, although the outermost slots are a bit on the narrow side – the supplied straps do fit, though. A single elastic strap on the back ties the back to the head tube.
The bags looks pretty weather resistant, although Camelchops do state that they can’t guarantee it 100% weatherproof because of the sewn construction. I’m sure the spring weather will let me test this soon.
I’d also ordered a couple of foam spacer pads as I wanted to keep the bag away from touching my Knog bell, as I knew that would mute it.
Fitting
I’ve got a few things on my handle bars that I knew I’d have to rearrange to fit the bag. I’d purposely held off redoing my bar tape (as you’ll see in the pictures!) until the bag had arrived. I’ve got SRAM Blips (the wired kind) on my bars, and I’ll need to reposition these slightly so that they don’t clash with the straps. I’ve also got an ‘out-front’ Garmin/GoPro mount that I might have to move from the bottom to the top of my stem plate.
Once the Blips had been moved inward slightly, and the bars re-taped, the Blimp was trial-fitted. As expected, I needed to move the out-front mount up to give sufficient clearance for my GoPro. I also added one spacer pad to keep the bag clear of the bell. I wasn’t too sure how to pass the straps through the clasps – the bag had arrived with the straps fastened, but I hadn’t paid any attention when I’d undone them!
In Use
For my first ride with the bag, I popped my iPhone and jacket in, both fitting perfectly. My phone’s an iPhone 11 in a Rapha case, and it fitted with space to spare, so you’d easily get an Max-sized or bigger Android phone in there.
During the ride there was no bouncing or significant movement from the bag, even on the roughest of roads that I covered.
Round-Up
All-in-all, the Blimp 0.5 bag seems to be a great piece of kit. It’s priced at £32.00. Camelchops have a range of other cycling bags, available made-to-order in a range of colours. If you’re in the market for those, their site is worth a visit.
