GSA Stolen On The First Day of Tour nr Reims

I have some sympathy, I have checked into a Hotel and locked the bike a little later, although I would not have booked an apartment in a shady residential area of a large town / city.

I have to admit I do not carry a lock of sufficent quality to anchor an aircraft carrier, just a simple alarmed disc lock, means my bike is harder to steal than one of my bikermates bikes with no lock, or many others the thieving scum can probably find nearby with less security. For each bike taken with any form of lock there must be 10 or 20 taken without any security - plenty of easy pickings.

Sure a load of blokes can lift it into a van, but they can do that whilst you pay for your fuel fillup, or slurp a coffee with the bike parked over the road from the Cafe, but this is very unlikely.

Even chained to something a good grinder may see them through your chain in under a minute, these guys had at least 10 mins to have away mateys GS - and it may have been a ped push, or even some scummy local yoofs just pushing it around the corner (assming he had not even enganged the steering lock - or they are easy to snap) He theorizes that a load of Eastern European former olypic power lifters took it in a van, but seems like no evidence produced.

Even in "very safe" places I still will use the disc lock, even though it ain't hard to cut a chunk out of the disc, it is for any opportunist walking past without an angle grinder, and often I will be within earshot and it's quite hard to bend down and cut through anything with a fucking annoyed biker and his bikermates repeatedly kicking you in the head with all their might.

In cities I always want secure parking, in towns I want at least a car park that keeps bikes out of sight and would not be an easy target for a thief, try and either park close to entrance, or right by my room.

Also accept it could happen to me, I do a bit to reduce the chances significantly, and then just enjoy my trips.
 
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This might be of interest to some of you.

I also had my Yamaha Tenere 700 World Raid stolen from this car park on the night of 22nd august 2024 and extremely happy to say at the outset, I was lucky enough to get it back. This was after a three week trip down through the Balkans to do the Albanian, Montenegro and Greece TeT. I deliberately picked this hotel as it is well outside the city centre and given the onboard luggage seemed a wise move, or at least I thought. Much to my dismay the following morning I came down and found the bike missing and I guess in some respects my own fault in that I never put the steering lock on, or a disk lock, so it was wheeled away effortlessly by two blokes, two up on a scooter.

I asked the hotel manager to contact the police on my behalf which he did and within 5 minutes 7 Police officers arrived. Yes seven, and later joined by two more.

Thankfully I had a Monimoto tracker fitted and it was very clear where the bike was and the route it had taken. Upon seeing the location image they immediately said we have a problem, as they knew the area well. As it transpired they had raided the same site two days before to recover a stolen BMW which I am reasonably sure now, is the poor chaps that this feed is dedicated too. The Monimoto tracker had been discovered and removed from the bike an hour after being stolen (01.00hrs) and chucked back over the fence of the hotel where it still remains, happily chirping away, but it did its job and pinned the bike down to being holed up in a container as its last location. I am extremely impressed with the tracker as it pinned it down to less than 2 meters. They clearly knew they had a problem given they drove back to the hotel to ditch it, serves them right...

The site is well known to the Reims Police in that it is a Roma Gypsy camp and they were very clear in that when they went into the camp two days prior to get a BMW back they had to send in a fully armed riot squad of considerable number, as they knew the gypsies were also armed. At this point I gave up any hope of ever seeing it again and I went to great lengths to suggest that I don't want anyone hurt because all said and done, it is a motorcycle and not your first born, but they did say to me they will get it back but not sure how many bits of it.

The bike was stolen less than 5 meters from the main entrance in full view whilst people were outside drinking. The onsite security footage is extremely clear and how they got it away being all too evident, but what surprised me is that no one even bothered to look up and report it despite it being extremely obvious what was going on. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to get involved, but at least report it to the hotel manager. Incidentally the hotel car park is secured and gated in its upper entrance but not its exit.

Anyway, during the same antics that the other chap suffered, I sat in my room on the phone trying to figure out how I am going to get back. Lesson here, think about this before you go... and being very honest I was more geared up for this happening in the Balkans and not in mainland Europe. Stupid to say the least.

Whilst sat in the room staring through the window talking to every car hire company in Northern France I actually saw the bike go up the road on the back of a truck that was towing a caravan and immediately asked the hotel manager to contact the Police, which he did. They informed him to tell me to stop panicking and get straight to the police station in the city centre of Reims as they had the bike, which I did but could not believe it given that it was less than two minutes since it went past the window. When I got the police station they cam in with stolen items and said they would take me to the holding garage to where the bike had been taken. From seeing it go past to being told to get the police station was less than two minutes which was pretty incredible policing bay anyone's standards.

What I found out later is that one of the officers that had attended the first call had gone to the location to see if he could see it, which he had, so I can only presume they had and waited for the bike to move and pounced on it seconds after it went past the window.

They have arrested two Romanians for this and the bike was dusted for prints before being released back to me in several pieces, however I was billed 500 euros release and recovery fee. I don't know if they have been charged but I can confirm that the super intendant was extremely brassed off with them to say the least, so would expect that they are in for a spell of incarceration, hopefully somewhere really bloody cold.

The bike was partially stripped with crash bars still unaccounted for and sump guard removed with luggage still missing, but thankfully the bike recovered. The damage to the bike was fairly light and only really notable to one of the tanks, which I have now repaired. Total cost to me is about 3k with the luggage that was stolen and have got £750 back from the travel insurance so quite out of pocket.

A really important point for all of us regardless of what we own, is to note is that if your bike is stolen and recovered and you claim for repairs, the bike is marked from this point forward and effectively has 3-4k wiped straight of its value as it is flagged stolen/recovered. I did not know this and thankfully have not claimed on the bike insurance, but be mindful.

The long and short of this is, I really Do feel for this chap as it is horrible and pretty daunting when it happens, and a feeling of complete isolation creeps in extremely quickly as you come to terms with your predicament stuck in a country not being able to converse fluently, but glad he has finally got sorted out.

On a final note I have to sing the praises of the Reims National Gendarmerie. They were incredibly polite and extremely helpful going to incredible lengths to get a very fluent young lady to help me fill in all the forms and kept me informed at all times, which I can only suggest was well and above what they need to to do and an absolute credit to their institution. I just hope our police operate with same professional courtesy to visitors to the UK.
 
We as a civilisation must ask ourselves why we put up with these gypsy/Roma people ,they seem to contribute nothing to society and are just parasites.
 
We as a civilisation must ask ourselves why we put up with these gypsy/Roma people ,they seem to contribute nothing to society and are just parasites.

They came up with a basis for the solution at the Wansee Conference. It took them but a short period thereafter to perfect it. The language is, broadly similar.
 
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We as a civilisation must ask ourselves why we put up with these gypsy/Roma people ,they seem to contribute nothing to society and are just parasites.
Correct. But there’s probably more laws protecting them and their culture etc, etc than most people realise.
Just calling them parasites would get you in trouble in most countries, well, probably just the UK.
 
That’s how these influencers roll; no detail of their life can be passed by.

Thankfully, Viv Stanshall showed me the light:
You want to see the video I am currently working on
LDG go shopping for frozen peas at Lidl 🤣🤣
 


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