We just bought a cycle carrier, which was a bit of a saga, to take our bikes to Center Parcs. We decided to buy one which mounts to the towbar and in the previous post I promised to explain why. Well before I get into that I'll outline the various options we had to us. Cycle carriers come in 2 basic types, ones where you carry the bike on top of the car and ones where to carry them on the back of the car. We had two additional options, as we have a trailer, carry them in the trailer or on top of the trailer using the same sort of racks as you'd use to go on the roof of the car.

We decided against the trailer options because at Center Parcs (as you will know if you've ever been) you unload your car at the start of your stay, then park the car in a big car park, never setting eyes on it again until the morning you leave when you go and collect it in order to load it back up. We don't have any kind of lock for the trailer and we weren't sure leaving it in the car park all week would have been OK. Also it's currently packed with our camping gear.

So we were looking at one of the carry the bikes on the car options. To carry them on the roof requires roofbars (which we don't have) and as part of the logic to getting a cycle carrier in the first place was that it would cost a similar amount to hiring bikes at Center Parcs buying roofbars was not really an option. There is another reason against carrying the bikes on the roof. We have a small MPV (a Ford C-Max) and as it's an MPV it's a little taller than a standard car. So lifting anything onto the roof is that little bit harder.

So that left the choice down to one of the systems that carry them on the back of the car. We had a strap on cycle carrier we used with our old car (an Audi A4) but it wouldn't fit onto the C-Max because it has a plastic aerodynamic duck tail on top of the tailgate. This is a problem because this is exactly where all the weight is carried. Basically the duck tail wouldn't take the weight. I never felt very confident with our old strap on system either. As everything was just strapped to the car and held with what looked like flimsy bits of bent metal it never really felt solid. Also when it was on there was no way to get into the boot.

As we've already got a towbar (for the trailer) a towbar mounted carrier seemed like the ideal solution. The ones which looked most solid were also way over our budget (of ~ £75) so having narrowed the search down to a towbar mounted system for around £75 the Thule 9705 was the obvious choice.

Having used it twice now, I can say that it inspires confidence, is relatively easy to load and compact to store. Read the full review here.