I have been putting a lot of thought into the best luggage solution for me. Currently I own two wheely suitcases, a small carry-on size one that I normally use, and a giant one that I got to move 20kg of my life from New Zealand to Australia. Wheels are perfect when moving from airport to car to house. Not so much when there is much walking to be done, and they’re also not brilliant on anything other than the smoothest road surfaces. Cobbled streets? Forget about it.

This leaves me with one option: buy new luggage. This leaves me with two options: buy a backpack, or buy a holdall.

I pretty much vetoed a backpack straight away. I don’t want to be a backpacker. They always look so uncomfortable. Everyone I know who has done it has been away longer than a month, so even though it’s probably the most convenient way of carting my stuff around, I said no. Plus, those things are expensive!

So this left me with a holdall. Now I really do have to travel light because too heavy and I won’t be able to carry it. I finished work early today and set out on a luggage hunt. This is the one I decided on. Nothing says ‘buy me’ more than a 50% off Christmas sale. It holds 60L which is plenty, and it folds into a little storage bag. Of course the first thing I did when I got home was pull it out to play with it, so now I’ll probably never actually be able to get it back in. Red is also a colour that I’ll spot on a luggage carousel in amongst everyone else’s black luggage.

Because one can’t just buy one thing in a sale, I also got a sleeping bag liner because I’m staying in one camping ground, some cheap hotels and a couple of hostels and their sheets can be nasty. My final purchase for the day was a padlock. I have plenty of travel padlocks but they are all ones that use keys and over the years all the keys have been lost. Combination lock? Problem solved.

Since my last post I’ve also purchased my ticket to Monza. Look out for me at the first chicane!