Tarek

Both readings exist and it is worth knowing the bad one before you act.

The innocent version is common: someone puts a lock through what they think is their own frame in a crowded rack and catches yours. Happens constantly with two bikes leaning together.

The deliberate version is a known tactic. Immobilise a bike, wait for the owner to return, and see what happens. Some owners cut their own lock and leave in a hurry without re-securing properly; some abandon the bike overnight, which tells the person exactly where an unattended bike will be sitting at 3am. The conversation about your lock beforehand is the detail that makes me lean this way in your case, because it means someone examined your security before it happened.

Either way, the practical steps are the same, and the order matters.

One more that is worth asking about rather than assuming: many campgrounds have somewhere better than your pitch.

A locked equipment store, a reception area, a shower block that locks at night. Staff at places used to cyclists often have a routine for this and will offer it if asked. It is the single highest-value thing you can do and it takes one conversation at check-in.

The time discrepancy is worth separating out, because it is probably not about effort at all.

Mapping apps assume a steady average speed and mostly ignore what a city does to you: traffic lights, junctions, waiting to turn, pedestrians, pausing at every road crossing. On an urban route the stopping is often a third of the elapsed time, and a new rider stops more and accelerates back to speed more slowly.

So 45 minutes for a 25 minute estimate is completely normal on a city commute and does not indicate anything wrong. It will drop as you learn the route — which lights you can catch, which side road avoids the bad junction — usually by ten minutes or so within a few weeks, without you getting any fitter.

Also, getting off and pushing is far more tiring than riding. Two short walked hills will account for a surprising amount of how wrecked you feel.

Afterwards, the useful question is whether this was a near miss or an incident, because they deserve different responses.

Near miss — no contact, no injury. Realistically: let it go, and instead ask whether anything about your position made you less visible. Not because it was your fault, but because that is the only variable you control. A lot of close passes happen where a rider is far enough left to be treated as not really in the lane.

Incident — contact, damage, injury, or driving dangerous enough that the next cyclist may not be lucky. Then: get the registration, get the location and time, get witnesses if any stopped, and report it. Many police forces now accept video submissions and act on them.

Which brings up the camera question. A rear-facing camera changes what you can do after an incident from nothing to something, and it also — in my experience — changes your own behaviour, because you know you will watch it back.

There is also a physical reason the adult experience is worse than the child one, which anyone who has tried it discovers quickly.

An adult is heavy and their feet are a long way from their centre of mass. Scooting along by pushing off the ground works fine for a 20 kg child and becomes genuinely tiring and hard on the feet for an adult within about twenty minutes. Stopping is also awkward, because you are catching much more momentum with your legs.

So the technique works — it is the right way to teach the skill — but it is a short phase for an adult rather than a mode of transport. That is another reason nobody sells the object: you need it for two afternoons.

Add a gentle grassy slope, incidentally. Rolling down a slight incline removes the scooting entirely and is how most adult learners get the first proper glide.