Someone stole my BBC broadcasting bike - it's like losing a friend

I was planning an ordinary afternoon out - bags packed, ready to roll - when I bounded downstairs and was hit by a jolt of disbelief.

The space where my cargo bike should have been was empty, and the double lock that had bolted it to my apartment wall was hacked.

My daughter darted between the other bikes, convinced someone must have moved it, but no, it was gone.

With cycling deeply embedded in daily life here in the Hague and across the Netherlands - part of the "Dutch DNA", as we say - I have no car, so used my bike for everything, from the school run to a shopping trip.

This was no ordinary bicycle. My colleague Kate Vandy and I retrofitted it to become a mobile broadcasting studio, which we named the Bike Bureau. I started "Dutch News from the Cycle Path", a reporting series born on the school run after my daughter asked me: "Why don't you just tell people the news now">Five-time Olympic champion Sir Bradley Wiggins says he's "indebted" to disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, saying that he has been a "great strength and inspiration".