Warning - Bike Thefts

[Brize]

Am at the Vila Chā ACSI site just north of Porto in Portugal. Last night a German camper van had two bikes stolen, one of which was an electric bike. Stupidly, the owners had complacency left them unsecured beside their camper, and no doubt a couple of scroats had climbed the fence looking for any plunder they could get their hands on.

The local police have been here to investigate. As least they came and were thorough - in the UK a distant voice on the 'phone would say 'so sorry, here's your crime number'!

Lots of other bikes around, but they were all secured to vans or chained up.

So, a timely reminder I hope to everyone, put everything away at night or lock it up - bikes, chairs, anything remotely attractive. Probably worse being near a large city/town, maybe better in the countryside, depends what risks you want to take.

For one German couple, their holiday has just been spoiled.W

 

[royandsharont]

I spent some time at the CAMC site Ferry Meadows in Peterborough recently. It’s in a huge parkland with easy access by the public. They had 24 hour security guards!

Never seen that before in the U.K. so asked one of them what prompted this. He explained there had been a lot of bike theft’s recently. Said scouts would come in the site at night and identify bikes they wanted and return next night in a team with tools to enable the thefts. Their preference was electric bikes of course.

He gave an example locally of 2 girls, Eastern European, who hang around the city centre on the lookout for electric bikes being parked up. They phone others who come and steal them straight away.

CAMC site Clumber Park was prevalent some years ago when I visited but they had a lock up container for campers to put them in overnight.