dyke pride ride – 21st June
This month, while we are still social distancing, we were able to enjoy a much reduced Dyke Pride Ride as part of the Pride in London Digital Event on the 21st June. This year we also organised with our Sistas from Dykes on Bikes® Rhine-Weser in Germany; Dori G and Steego, to ride at exactly the same time as us, but in northern Germany… so we became ‘Same Time Dyke Pride Ride’..
LOUD AND PROUD !
Dyke Pride Ride 2020
There was no Pride parade this year so Dykes on Bikes decided to be loud and proud by riding through London flying the flag. Our ride would take us to blue plaque residences of some formidable women in our history.
We all met up in St James Square to decorate our bikes. Not hugging hello was hard but the laughs where all there!
Our first stop was Piccadilly Circus to see the Pride billboard,
hooting past and our music at the rear we had flags, clapping and shouts so our President lead us around again and we pulled up to take a good look at the billboard.
Many photos later by various photographers we where on our way in loud and proud style!
Off to Holland Street and Radclyffe Hall…despite the rain the atmosphere is high and the response is great! Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was a novelist and poet best known for her Novel The Well of Loneliness which was banned shortly after publication in 1928.
Then on to Garbut Street and Octavia Hill. She was one of Victorian Britain’s most important social reformers and because of her methods laid the foundations for the modern profession of housing management. Hill was also a co- founder of the National Trust
Away we go to Fitzroy Square and the home of Virginia Woolf, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. A beep of the horns and there’s always a cheer or a wave. The rain is upon us, do we notice ..not really the day is good one. Looking up from the square we can also see the BT tower with its wrap around billboard recognising all those involved in Pride and there we are ! Dykes On Bikes London !
Now it’s to Cunningham Place the home of Emily Davies, she petitioned parliament to grant women the vote… unsuccessfully but led the founding of Britain’s first Women’s collage.
The sun finally shows its face as we head north to our final stop, a picnic at the Women’s Pond. Still loud and proud all the way there.
We have had a fantastic day of riding, being loud and proud and of admiring a few impressive women in our history along the way.
