Bikes go missing from Mountain Mayhem, which is not OK

We’re sad to have to report that someone made off with a number of mountain bikes at last weekend’s Mountain Mayhem at Gatcombe Park. Bikes that didn’t belong to them. While we don’t have an exact count, bikes thought to value a total of £15-20k were taken and one witness believes them to have disappeared into a Ford Transit Connect registration number CN58***.

This was apparently an organised theft and, needless to say, the sort of thing that should be actively discouraged.

At least three of the bikes were Giant Trances: two 2013 Trance X 29ers (one pictured above) and one medium 2010 Trance X 3 (stock photo below).

After waking up and visiting the toilet at 3.30am I settled back down and was then woken again at 4am to do my next lap. I looked out of my caravan and the bikes that were there at 3.30am were now not there! I borrowed a teammates bike and went out looking for anything… After riding around I saw a White Ford Transit Connect (reg no. CN58***) coming out of the tarmac drive that lead to the back of the arena (marked “strictly no entry”) I tried to flag it down but he drove off waving. I saw this van again around 15 minutes or so later leaving the lane that leads to the bottom of the campsites (where we later discovered was where the bikes had been passed over the hedge!) again I tried to flag the van down but he sounded his horn at me, waved and drove off. Unfortunately I only managed to catch the first part of the reg. This was reported to the police when they finally arrived but may as well repeat it. My bike was a 2013 Giant Trance X 29er 0, which was apart from the Bontrager carbon “side entry” bottle holder was fairly standard. My friend Stuart had the same bike but had done various modifications to it (blue bars, shorter stem, Hans Dampf front tyre and a charge saddle).

If anyone saw anything suspicious or catches wind of these or any other suspicious bikes, please take note of the seller’s details and contact local law enforcement as well as newsdesk@singletrackworld.com. We will then pass any information back to the owners and Mountain Mayhem team.