I’m not about to start a coal round but I could on the bike with the new Ortlieb panniers – the “Front / Back-Roller Classic”. Comically massive if you take the picture at face value but fear not, I shan’t be pedalling to Italy with them looking like this; the fiendish German system that will keep my chattels dry means that there is a fair bit of material that is required to be rolled down and secured. There is, of course, the obligatory maze of diagrams to follow on the sheet of paper that has arrived with the panniers that will help me secure the bags firmly to the bike (they are currently just hanging) and, more worryingly a small bag of plastic “things” that I have no idea what they do. Figuring everything out is the kind of job that requires a glass of wine to be on hand and as it’s only 2pm, I’ll save that until later. Now just the cycling shoes to arrive from Decathlon and I could actually leave tomorrow. Now there’s an idea….