As Mountain Bikers that regularly thrash our bikes up hill and down dale it’s easy to forget the investment we’ve got tied up in our machinery. Especially if the bike is a couple of years old and has had a few upgrades along the way we don’t always appreciate what it would cost us to replace our favourite rides.

But it can cost a lot. Before my 2003 Marin Rift Zone had seen its second birthday it was substantially different from the shiny bike I took home originally and when you throw in list price inflation you can quickly be facing a sizeable replacement bill it your pride and joy gets stolen.

The best thing to do is make sure it doesn’t get stolen in the first place, the next best thing is to make it a bit easier to recover if it is. Now Surrey Police are offering free RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags to bike owners and it might be worth thinking about getting some. Certainly the thought of some oik swanning around on my top of the range Orange is enough to make me think.

There’s more information about combatting cycle theft on the Surrey Advertiser website and from PC Graeme Ingate‘s page on the Surrey Police website.

But if you really want to stop the theft of your bike, do the obvious:

• Lock it up, even when it’s in your garage or shed
• Make sure what you lock it to is immovable
• Don’t leave your bike where it can attract attention, unless it’s outside the Peaslake Store on Sunday mornings!