Good hiding places for bikes

[snorri]

I was at my local Leisure Centre yesterday, no need to worry about hiding your bike there, the sheffield stands remain behind a high wall that was built to hide the wheelie bins.
Since my last visit there about 10 years ago the capacity of the car parking area has been doubled but still cyclists are required to squeeze their bikes into an inadequate parking facility.
Little wonder few people cycle to the Leisure Centre,...... rant over.

 

[Fnaar]

@Fnaar i have missed your postings

Thank you.

 

[MichaelW2]

When I used to park my bike in Hastings of an evening, I was just as worried by casual vandalism as determined thievery.
I used to park it well away from any obvious walking path that drunk lads would take. I had one stash that was a handrail on the steps to a basement shop. It would have offered cover for thieves but was secure from vandals. My other favourite was to park it on the wrong side (ie the road) of railings.

 

[NickNick]

Does anyone else take the QR skewers out if you're stuck having to lock the bike up somewhere that you're not totally comfortable with?

I know it won't help if they're loading the bike in the back of a van, but I would hope it would make life much harder for any thief that intends to ride of with the bike (which I would assume is the majority, but could be wrong on that).

 

[MichaelW2]

Does anyone else take the QR skewers out

and replace with solid bolt-on axle.

 

[Will Spin]

I've hidden some of my bikes in the shed, behind the onion strings in the hope that Mrs Spin doesn't see them and realise quite how many bikes I actually have.

 

[mjr]

[QUOTE 4981244, member: 45"]Our bike shed is right round the back of the no-public-access building.[/QUOTE]
That's the sort of location where one of our bikes went from. Industrial site, no public access beyond reception (in theory) - you have to pick up a phone in a small security-glass airlock and request entry - and a 3m (IIRC) spiked railway-style metal perimeter fence around the whole site. I think we suspect they followed a careless worker in but we don't really know - the cameras were upgraded afterwards and it's not happened again in many years (more than a dozen I think) AFAIK.

I was at my local Leisure Centre yesterday, no need to worry about hiding your bike there, the sheffield stands remain behind a high wall that was built to hide the wheelie bins.
Since my last visit there about 10 years ago the capacity of the car parking area has been doubled but still cyclists are required to squeeze their bikes into an inadequate parking facility.
Little wonder few people cycle to the Leisure Centre,...... rant over.

One of the leisure centre has a similar setup and it's one of the highest-theft locations in the local area, worse than the railway station and cinema most years. Additional cycle parking has been installed in the nearest edge of the CCTV'd multi-storey car park just across a small road, but plenty of people still prefer the hidden bike park - I think because it's nearest the door.

 

[KnackeredBike]

We have "secure" areas with swipe card access but of course they are only secure if you slam the door in the face of anyone behind you and make them swipe too.

Plus they are mag locks which are rubbish security wise anyway.

 

[Salty seadog]

Back passage is a good place to hide a bike

Indeed, it is an an oft seen sight, a wheel bender bike crack when following a rider who is on the drops.

On board I store mine in a small storage cupboard which is only used by one person. My manager who also keeps his bike in there.

 

[BurningLegs]

We have "secure" areas with swipe card access but of course they are only secure if you slam the door in the face of anyone behind you and make them swipe too.

Plus they are mag locks which are rubbish security wise anyway.

This sounds very similar to the bike storage at my place of work. We have a ground floor car park which is covered by the building (the building is kind of on legs - very similar to a lot of supermarkets where you take a flat escalator up from the car park). The bike storage is "secured" by a 6 foot metal fence with spikes on the top, and a mag-lock. I don't know how many people have cards which will open the mag-lock but it must be over 100, and there are a lot of bikes in there. I always lock mine to one of the fence posts with a Kryptonite D-Lock and hope that if someone gets in to steal a bike they'd sooner walk off with one of the many unlocked bikes and not take the chance of trying to cut my lock.

 

[Salty seadog]

[QUOTE 4987045, member: 45"]That's two people.[/QUOTE]

Two of us store bikes in there but only one goes in there for work stuff.