A VALUABLE bike used to raise over £7000 for a disability day centre has been stolen from a charity worker’s home in Poole.

Chris Harrison, 50, had been celebrating his daughter’s 18th birthday with family on Saturday evening when he noticed the white Condor bike had been taken from the porch of his home in Garland Road, Poole.

CCTV footage has been recorded and sent to the police, showing the thief on the bike and attempting to get into a taxi.

Back in June, Chris, alongside two others, completed the 962 mile cycle journey from Land’s End to John O’Groats, raising thousands of pounds for Dorset-based charity Diverse Abilities.

Chris said: “The bike was leant to me by a friend to train for and complete the Land’s End to John O’Groats cycle ride for charity.

“I recently had a significant birthday and the friend told me ‘it’s yours as a present’ as we’d been through so much together.

“I was really touched by their generosity and now I just wish I had taken better care of it, always kept a lock on it.

The bike had been stored in the porch before it was taken sometime before 8pm on Friday December 1, and Chris believes the thief must have spotted the bike when he opened the door to let his Dad into the house.

He added: “It’s always in the back of my mind that I should have looked after it better but you just don’t expect something that blatant to happen in plain sight at that time of day. The culprit must have been so brazen.

“If the curtains weren’t drawn we would have seen them do it. I can’t believe someone would do that when there was six of us in the house.”

Chris posted the CCTV footage of the thief to his Facebook page and has seen the video shared over 200 times.