The Cotton Tree CP is very much an 'open' park, lots of peope use it as a through-way to get to the beach or river (and it's great that you can do so, we go through it on our scooters or bikes all the time). However, that's one of the reasons that what happened, happened
Sorry to hear you lost that gear. I think that in this day and age we need to at least hide things, or make their presence less obvious - put the kayaks under the CT, that sort of thing. I am currently in the process of buying kayaks for my three kids, and we will need mum and dad kayaks too... holy crap not sure how we'll carry five kayaks and five bicycles, let alone secure them! Hmmm... I know, inverter and X-Box! We can travel light then, and get fat