Travelling about Europe is great fun on a bike, but with the sort of sportsbikes we ride what do you do about luggage? After years of having various old bags and rucksacks bungeed to the rear seat, accompanied by lashings of gaffa tape to protect tail units, we thought it was time to invest in some proper luggage to avoid:

1. Wearing a ruck sack.
2. Covering the entire back end of your bike in duct tape. Bugger to get off too.
3. Having aforementioned bungees or cargo nets all over the bike.

Some manufacturers are now beginning to produce some bespoke luggage for their bikes; OK, touring types have had such options for ages, with various plastique panniers, topboxes, etc., but sports bike seem not to have been considered for touring until recently. We were stuck with the ubiquitous tankbag, which is horrible - annoying all the time you're riding and doubly annoying every time you have to fill up avec d'essence.

BMW have come up with the creation shown on the left, very fetching and seems to offer much: good capacity in the main area, plus 2 expandable side pockets, and all designed to be waterproof.

The base of the bag is shaped to fit over the humped pillion pad, promising good location and freedom from the constant irritation of strap-on luggage - excess movement under extreme riding. Unfortunately the securing straps seem to be a bit of an afterthought and do not locate well enough to keep the bag held down properly, so it jumps slides about too much when riding hard on bumpy roads.

After a week's touring both bag and bike were showing scuffs and wear damage so the design needs a bit of refining. BMW have a bit to learn about sports bike riding perhaps?

One bit of kit I have invested in to solve the above shortcomings is the Baglux Whoppa. This ingenious design allows you to carry a load of jeans, T-shirts, waterproofs, undercrackers, socks and perhaps anything else you would normally carry under the rear seat hump. Of course, if like me you own a '05 onwards Fireblade this won't account for much.

The bag sits on the pillion seat, but rather ingeniously avoids the need for unsightly bungees and rolls of gaffa tape by employing a discrete mounting system.

The idea is that the bag is held on with zips, two each side. The part of the fixing that stays on the bike is strategically bolted below the rear seat hump and even when the bag is not attached is reasonably well hidden. When the bag is in situ and firmly zipped on, it stays there too, but here comes the bad bit.

The whole idea of carrying soft luggage on a bike is to get it on and off your bike quickly and easily, whilst loaded, and zips would seem the perfect solution. Well, in some ways they are, but only if both ends of the zip (male and female if you like?), are securely fastened to ensure sliding into each other is carried out with ease, this was not the case with mine that I purchased from HPS for the princely sum of £91.22.

The zips were a bugger to get attached as the ends would not slip into each other to get the zipper to zip; once the bag was filled it would not fit around the curve of the seat. The answer? Attach the luggage to your bike whilst leaving all the contents sitting on the ground. This was the solution and made fitting the bag a bit easier.

However, when I first came to load all the contents back in, they wouldn't fit; once the bag is secured in place on the rear seat of the bike you lose about 5 litres of luggage space because the seat is curved and presses into the base of the bag. This also causes the removable reinforced sides to raise themselves making the lid hard to close.

Anyway, I persevered for 3 trips like this until the zip puller broke and that was it, back to the dreaded ruck sack. However, I did send the faulty zipper items back to HPS who promptly replaced them with ones that did look much better, so fair play to HPS. Further practice and perhaps I now have the knack.

When fitting the bag to the seat fixing it seems best to do one up zip up half way only before attempting to do the other. This gives you more room to play with between the bag zips and the seat fixing. It is probably still best to attach the bag unloaded, or at least with the top unzipped as you just can't get round the fact that you do lose luggage space once it is in place. The odd thing is Baglux don't include this knack of attaching the bag in the instructions. Well, they do on their site now ...

Anyway, I have just used the bag all weekend and once in place it is secure and the waterproof lid is exactly that - it chucked it down at one point and there was only a small moist patch in my jeans when I unpacked them. I'm pretty sure it was water that made them moist?!

Nah, bollocks to Tet's zips and having to leave your socks and pants all over the hotel forecourt while you struggle with your ever diminishing luggage.

My idea is to divorce the bag completely from the tail unit or seat with a nice rack in a discrete shade of black. This one is the Renntec model for £55. Renntec also do a matching tailpack for £36 which fastens very neatly to the rack with two wide velcro bands and a quick release strap to add stability and a bit of fail-safe security. As a bonus, you can still get on and off the bike easily as the bag is not in the way.

The rack fastens to existing mountings under the pillion seat. The fitting kit includes the necessary longer bolts and a couple of spacers to keep everything at the right level. The rack stands just clear of the tail unit so there's no damage to your shiny plastic. The only mod needed on the Fireblade version is to remove the helmet brackets under the seat and to take off the seat strap, no great loss. Renntec supply a couple of strips of protective rubbery stuff for the plastic if needed.

The underseat storage area, such as it is, is not affected by the mounting so you can still get a tool or two and a bit of a puncture repair outfit in there. The seat pad fits back on as normal.

The bag is good. It can be used as standard as in the pic above, or a simple spiral zip undoes to double the height for those longer trips where additional pants are required. It's not waterproof, but Renntec do include a waterproof cover. Unfortunately this appears to be made of rather too delicate material and mine fell apart on the first trip. But here is it prior to its demise.

The bag can be crammed full in the privacy of your hotel room and then easily fitted to the rack in seconds, while Tet struggles with his zips, skiddies fluttering in the breeze across the hotel grounds.

But a word of warning: don't extend the bag to full height and cram it with heavy stuff - the rack carries the bag high up and behind the rear wheel, so some very odd handling traits can arise with overzealous luggaging. Best to avoid the extension and invest in lycra evening wear ...

Carrying light luggage on a sports bike is always a bit of a quandary. Over the years I have tried many different methods that usually consist of bungees and cargo nets. I have tried tank bags too, but just hate the things as I always feel they are in the way, so I have always preferred to have my luggage behind me.

So, whilst browsing through Bike magazine one day I saw an ad for the Kriega range of luggage that had a photo of a CBR600RR with a bag on the back, that bag being the US 20 (20 as it has a capacity of 20 litres). I quite liked the look of it, so I bought one.

Today I stuffed it full of the items I would normally take for a long weekend away - spare gloves and w/proof gloves, spare visor, can of chain lube, disc lock, spare brake and clutch levers, a puncture repair kit, basic clothing and an Alpinestar waterproof jacket; pretty much what I'd normally carry and this lot seemed to fill the bag nicely.

No room for a bottle of water though.

I proceeded to fit the thing to the rear of my bike. You have to remove the rear seat and the lay two long straps with plastic buckles each end under the seat and then re-attach said seat. The Kriega bag then sits on top of this, having a rather useful rubber netting stitched to the underside to reduce the wobbliness of it.

Buckle up the underseat straps to their female counterparts on the top of the bag and adjust until tight. There is also a waterproof pocket on the top of the bag and is has a waterproof zip too, but you have to unbuckle the bag to get in and out of it. Saying that, a drawback of the Renntec bag is no exterior pocket at all, so this is better.

You will see from the photos that it sits there nicely, and certainly seems secure enough, but it is totally reliant on you ensuring the rear seat is clicked into place correctly otherwise it could well be bouncing down the road behind you giving your mates following something else to dodge at high speed. Another tip, you will have to protect your plastic on tail unit as it will chafe and ruin your paint work, but seeing as mine is already buggered, it doesn't really matter to me much.

In use it is wise to check the straps now and again when you stop to ensure that as the luggage inside the bag compresses, the straps stay tight. The good news is the bag is waterproof as advertised, so your smalls should stay dry even in fairly hard rain.

The bag itself is rather like a duffle bag, you stuff everything in one end and the once full, you have 3 x buckles that keep it closed. It is said to be 100% waterproof and it seems to be true.

One benefit of this bag is that you can attach smaller US 10 Kriega bags to the top and the side, so you can end up carrying everything bar the kitchen sink if you so desire, but the weight of the bag I loaded up was about 8 kgs total, so fairly heavy already and handling being critical, the less weight the better really.

Is the Kriega likely to be better than the Renntec set up?? Well, only time and experience will tell, but it certainly has two very definite advantages to start with, 1/ it is waterproof, 2/ The Kriega is about half the price of Renntec rack and bag. I think it looks better too, and when not in use you don't have an unsightly rack hanging off the back end of your beloved sports bike, making it look like a tourer. But that's just me I guess.

Valid comments from Tet there ... and the steel rack has the big disadvantage of all that extra weight and it places the luggage high up and well behind the rear wheel, making the bike a bit flippy-floppy in tight twisties.

But I find the US20 slides about far too much, even when the straps are really pulled down tight, so I resorted to a couple of bungees to keep it in place. Plus I didn't really trust the seat pad to provide the most secure mounting point and the bungees really firm everything up. Seem to work but do rather spoil the whole look of the thing.

One thing missing with this bag though - a pocket for all those little items needed during touring trippage. I resorted to using a man-pouch strapped to the US20, but all a bit messy ... so the search must go on for that elusive ideal baggage!