Most punctures are caused by tiny tears in the inner tube, resulting from either something sharp like a thorn piercing the tyre, or the tube getting pinched against the rim when you hit a pothole or similar. On the whole, they’re easy to fix as you just repair the tube, check that whatever caused the puncture isn’t still in the tyre, put the tube back in again and pump it up.

But occasionally, something altogether more drastic will happen, and leave a larger gash in the tyre, exposing a section of the inner tube. If that happens, the chances of another puncture happening a bit further down the road are much higher, and you need to plug that hole in the tyre.

Unless you ride with a tube of super glue in your jersey pocket, the simplest way to solve this one is with a tyre boot. In the broadest sense, a tyre boot is anything you put inside a tyre to cover up the section with the hole in left by a nasty puncture, thus protecting the tube. This can be almost anything, from a dedicated vinyl membrane tyre boot, to a fiver, to an energy gel wrapper, to a chopped up bit of an old tyre. Or, as I had to improvise on a trip to Flanders earlier this year, the folded up instructions from a puncture repair kit. Whatever it is, you should be able to find something that works.

Your chosen tyre boot needs to conform to the shape of the tyre, be unobtrusive enough that it won’t interfere with the inflation of the tube, be at least sturdy enough to withstand anything that pokes through the hole in the tyre (leaves and single sheets of paper need not apply) and (obviously) not be something that could potentially cause another puncture.