My bike was stolen from city centre — I followed the people who stole it

Bike thefts are on the rise and the majority of them go unsolved. Cardiff is among the cities grappling with a mounting bike theft crisis, with an alarming 1,074 bike thefts reported to South Wales Police in 2024. Notably, 421 of these incidents occurred in the heart of the city centre.

This worrying statistic makes Cardiff the third worst city for bike theft across both England and Wales and residents in parts of the city have been warned by police to pay particular attention to keeping their bikes safe. One of those areas is Butetown, where Dylan Bilyard lives.

“We’re on high alert after police warned us in January about surging bike thefts, something that became all too real when, just the next morning, I was greeted by the sight of a wheel-less bike right outside my home,” .

“I had the idea to track a stolen bike after my friends had their bikes stolen five times from Central Square over two months.”

Among them was Eva Cahill, a 24-year-old who had owned her bike since she was 15 and only just introduced it to the streets of Cardiff whne it disappeared outside her university building during daylight hours.

“It vanished. I thought I’d forgotten where I’d left it,” she said. “It wasn’t an expensive bike but it had a lot of sentimental value.”

She reported it to the police, but without a serial number, officers were unable to do anything. Now, Eva secures her mother’s old bike with multiple locks and remains vigilant, parking only under watchful CCTV eyes, reports . But Dylan said he and Eva still wonder what happened to the bike after it was stolen.

“To find out, I bought a GPS tracker and put it on a second-hand bike,” said Dylan.

“At 4pm, I cable-locked the bike with the tracker fitted underneath the saddle near where Eva had hers taken. At 3pm the next day, I got a notification that my bike had moved. This map showed it travelling around the city centre.

“Coincidentally, about an hour before I got the notification I saw two other bikes being carried away from broken locks and abandoned wheels. I followed the people who took them.

“They, too, went all around the city centre, in almost exactly the same path. They gave the wheels to someone and received something small in return. I then saw them go into a car park and put something up their noses.”

Dave Hanns, proprietor of Motorlegs Cycle Workshop, told Dylan that it’s “standard” for bicycles to be exchanged for drugs.

“Most bike thieves are driven by a need to get a fix,” he said. “Most stolen bikes end up injected in someone’s arm.”

A Cardiff native, Dave doesn’t judge those whose difficult lives have led them to steal bikes.

“I’ve been offered stolen bikes before but you can usually tell. A bloke will come to sell his bike and it’s a woman’s bike about half his size, or else they have two tell-tale dents in the frame where the D-lock has been levered off,” the 56-year-old said.

He’s witnessed such incidents many times. “One time I was serving a woman and her two children, buying a bike for her son,” he said. “She turned around to pay for literally two seconds and the bike was gone. Only the children saw it happen.

“In central Cardiff, I’ve even seen gangs of people with angle grinders, or people with bolt cutters wearing high-vis to pose as council staff.”

Another bike shop owner in Cardiff, Michael Winter, told Dylan he had stolen bikes sold to him a couple of times, and only realised when the police came round to find them.

It’s common for stolen bikes to be sold on online marketplaces or to second-hand bike shops. The bikes will be traded by the people who steal them to professionals who move them and sell them on.

Michael now sends the police the serial number of every bike he gets. They think he’s just getting them to do his admin, but he says he’s protecting himself in case he inadvertently buys a stolen bike. “The police come here instead of going out there to find them. It’s much easier for them because they’re so hard to find,” the 71-year-old said.

But most cases are closed without the bike ever being returned to its owner.

Tracking his bike, Dylan said: “My bike didn’t stay in the city centre for long. Within an hour of it being taken, it travelled across Sanatorium Park and to an address in Fairwater. It didn’t move for a couple of days so I went there to check it out.

“I could hear drill music coming from the house, and though I never saw a face, a tattooed hand holding a long cigarette was visible in the doorway. A dog was barking inside. I sent a letter with a contact number explaining the tracker and that I wanted an anonymous conversation.

“I haven’t yet had a reply to the letter. The tracker is offline despite being fully charged, so it’s likely that someone has found and disabled it. What happens to Cardiff’s stolen bikes remains a mystery.”