I Found My Perfect Travel Bag
This was originally published in my Prime Lenses Newsletter. You can sign-up for a weekly update to your inbox here.
Greetings from Iceland, we’re on the road again! A hot take about whether or not big headphones are worth it is brewing, but this week I bring you a follow-up to a newsletter from a couple of weeks ago where I wrote about the perfect travel bag. I speculated that it might be this Patagonia bag – in Prime Lenses Yellow, naturally 😊
Since then, friends of the show Craig Mod and Daniel Milnor have also written about their experiences with bags and James Popsys posted a video to YouTube about bags, again. Clearly, there’s something in the air.
Since last we spoke on the matter, I’ve formed a list of the requirements a perfect travel bag would need to meet.
Opens flat for easy access in case the thing you need is at the bottom
Can be carry on – we fly with Easyjet a lot so they’d need to accept it as carry on, not large carry on that costs extra
Laptop can be accessed easily – believe it or not, some I found you didn’t seem to be able to access the laptop unless you pulled everything out
I can strap a jacket or jumper to the outside or I can attach some form of webbing
Weatherproof/ durable
30L capacity so I can squeeze a couple of nights overnight in there
There are, it turns out, a TON of bag companies in 2025. Probably hundreds, and every one of them will sell you “the one true bag” or “the last bag you’ll ever need” and in one case, the bag that “caused the most arguments” which is weird but was at least a unique selling point.
After whittling down to a shortlist of 11, I decided I’d found one that fit the bill, and if not the perfect travel bag, one that’s pretty close for me.
This is the Three Peaks Travel Commuter Bag. I chose it for a reason that’s very specific to my needs as it has a particular feature that I think unlocks a bunch of use cases.
Firstly, I’ll acknowledge the bullet point this bag doesn’t meet, and that’s the capacity. At 24L it’s a fair bit shy of 30L, but I’m willing to overlook that for this bag’s party trick, the top pocket.
Top pocket with packing cube and webbing to store small items like glasses and keys
My Leica M with 2 spare lenses
A lot of backpacks have an upper front pocket for fast access to essentials. I am an idiot, and overload this pocket regularly which unbalances the bag and also means that when you open it the contents are liable to spill out everywhere. The Three Peaks 24L bag has a top pocket which is flat when the bag is upright. It opens to reveal a tray like pocket. It’s broad and flat and this is where I had a realisation that made it perfect for me. So much of my backpack time is spent with a backpack and, out of necessity, a camera bag as well. This is A) an extra bag to carry and B) the sort of thing that has Easyjet staff say things like “Can that fit inside your carry on?” or my favourite “Is that medical?”. With this bag, I’ve added a cube to the top so now, part of my backpack is a camera bag without sacrificing as much space inside as if I had to put in a separate camera sling. This is HUGE for me and after testing on this trip, I can confirm that even when a bit overloaded, the bag retained its shape and worked a treat with a good amount of space inside.
Bag with 3 coats and a jumper attached using the built in straps
Shoulder straps are broad and feel well padded, and the built in straps with hooks mean that I was able to roll up a waterproof, jumper and kids coats to carry on the outside when I needed to. It also opens flat on both sides which is super handy for quick access. There are loops on the front that you better believe I’m going to run stretchy chords through to make a web, and the exterior coating and zips all seem like they resist water well on their own in my tests in fairly heavy Icelandic rain, for harsher conditions the bag comes with a rain cover.
I like this bag so much that I’m genuinely tempted to buy a second and keep it in a cupboard for when I wear this one out. It comes with an optional waist strap that I’m not using as I’m not hiking, and a chest strap with a very nice one touch release mechanism.
At the start of this process, I would not have been able to pluck Three Peaks from the air as a brand I should look at but on the basis of this, I think I’m sold and will be looking at the rest of their line-up. They seem like fine Welsh folks, I wonder if they’d like to sponsor a newsletter? ;)