In reply to Rigid Raider:
> If they don't turn up locally they will turn up in a few months in eastern Europe. I once sat on a plane next to a Serb lad who, when he saw my bike magazine, began boasting about his pal in Novi Sad who makes a nice living selling bikes stolen in the UK. When he saw the look on my face he suddenly forgot how to speak English.
Same in sweden. By the time people have woken and discovered something has gone, there is a van full of bikes, power tools and chainsaws on a ferry over to the Baltic states. They are very canny, they use different cars and vans for the actual robbing, then transfer to the vehicle that goes out of country, so the reg. No. going through border control isn't on any suspect vehicle lists.