So the next instalment - I didn't find the bicycle by searching back.
It turns out it was a long way back. Because a few days layer I'm going though the area on a motorbike. Suddenly there is a weird glitch where I jumped location and the motorbike changes into a bicycle. I log out and go back in and the motorbike is back and I can now see the bicycle icon in the locale and indeed it is there. However one unfortunate side effect. All my toolbelt inventory has disappeared. I carn't see how to replicate this and I wish I'd been recording but I wasn't.
So the or place the character on the vehicle functionality does not check to see if the character is already on a vehicle with an unfortunate side effect