Hornit Clug bike rack review

Bike storage is a problem for a lot of cyclists. For someone who reviews bikes for a living, and shares a home with another avid bike rider, it's a very big problem.

We keep mountain bikes and commuting bikes in an Asgard shed (like this one), and road racing bikes inside - and the Hornit Clug has certainly proved a useful piece of plastic engineering in the latter case.

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Clug offers its miniature bike racks in five sizes for adult bikes - I had the roadie, suited to tyres of 23mm-32mm. For those experimenting with gravel and mud, there's options from 33mm-81mm - so you should be covered.

Weighing in at 35g, the Clug arrives as two pieces of moulded plastic, with two screws and plastic plugs. It's designed for use on stone, brick and concrete walls - fitting one on a plasterboard wall is not recommended.

You don't want to rip the box open, as it's actually used as part of the fitting process, with a printed template designed to make the job easier.

The Clug needs to be positioned at the correct height for each bike, to ensure that the rear wheel will touch the ground, so that the floor is actually taking the weight of your machine. This could present a problem if you're frequently swapping bikes, but I didn't encounter issues - differences in wheelbase are fairly minimal provided the bike is a similar size.

Once the outer holder (white in this case) is fitted to the wall, the inner (orange) snaps in, it's easy to snap out again should you want to remove the Clug.

Installing four Clugs in our spare room took about an hour, and the result was a much tidier space. The rear wheel does rest against the wall, if this is a problem, you can place a protective layer between the tyre and paintwork.

We've since removed the Clugs to redecorate the room, with no issues around marking or damage.

It's also possible to store bikes horizontally, with both wheels on the ground and the rear clasped by the Clug, though this is more of a one bike storage solution and will take up more floorspace.

The only issue I encountered during my Clug journey was that the device relies upon the tyre staying within the 23mm-32mm tolerance. I did once wake up to a cascade of crashing carbon - with four bikes lined up (two of them time trial bikes used mainly in the summer months) the tyres had gradually deflated and this led to a potentially expensive domino effect.

It's fair to call this user error, however - prevention is as simple as removing the bike from time to time, and pumping the tyres. If you use lightweight latex tubes, it's probably not a solution for you.

Coming in at £14.99, the Clug isn't a big outlay - but it is a lot more pricey than some of the simple hooks you can find on eBay. However, it's significantly more attractive.