I wrote this article as a memory of a short but intense and vivid trip for all those involved, that we experienced together in England and Holland August 2018. Hannah who is a superstar, mentioned one of her editor friends for Peace News was looking for someone to write a piece. It has therefore been published on PeaceNews, you can find it here: https://peacenews.info/node/9150/biking-netherlands-code-rood

It is always a huge pleasure to me to think that I’ve published a piece for Peace News. Of all types of news, this is is the best type! And I’m happy to be part of it and sending peace and love out across the Earth.

The full non edited version is here below. Enjoy!! with some photos to accompany!

Code Rood Cycle Trip—- London to Groningen —-Climate Action Camp

Written by Mathilde Griffin, 14 September 2018, London

Our cycling trip- that was to become a beautiful shared experience with an ever-growing inspiring and determined group- started with 6 of us meeting together in London, just across the road from the centre of British power, Westminster.

What motivated us to come together and go on a journey, joined en route by many more humans from varied backgrounds?

The main reason relates to the fact that the governments of our respective nations are wasting time sitting around, drinking coffee in single use cups, disconnected from planet Earth, from other nations, and from us, the people, from what we truly need.

Natural ecosystems and species around us are dying, with no space to breath as all natural sites are overdeveloped, and all resources that we depend on are depleted and wasted.

Cycling allows us to breath. Cycling gives us power. It allows us to move forward, to mobilise en masse and to ride together in the direction we need. This direction is a green path we each need to cultivate, linking together to create a thick forest, full of trees, plants, biodiversity, clean energies, brought on by our active and activist momentum.

This  cycle trip was a realisation of team work, energies, commitment, caring and free spirits coming together to make magic happen. We ate fresh bread baked for us by our Quaker friends, we slept below the stars on Friends of the Earth turf, we lounged on the ferry deck surrounding a circus family juggling their way across land and sea with 3 children, a trailer and a tandem powered by 2 fierce, free, and spaghetti-fuelled parents.

We took over a Rotterdam street and house with our bikes, banners, and banter. We crowded around laaarge plates of tasty vegan food, our first international dinner cooked for us with love by Kokerellen, a vegan food van that caters for all sorts of grassroots events and has been keeping cyclists across Europe well fed for more than 25 years.

As we cycled north we crossed various Dutch landscapes: we cycled across dykes, along canals, through forests and onto old city squares.  Streets and paths were perfectly managed and laid out to respect cyclists, a must! We need to replicate this elsewhere as a way to bring in a wave of health through cycling.

We enjoyed the last of the summer sun, although it was already cooling down from what has been a wonderfully warm summer. Unfortunately, for us conscious folk, these warm dry summer days can’t help but remind us of the global warming that comes at such a high price and peril for the most poor of the world’s population.

This is why our bike trip culminated in Groningen with a climate action camp and a strong will to disobey governments, police and the fossil fuel overlords sucking the earth dry of its blood and nutrients, leaving chaos and earthquakes in their wake.

The atmosphere of calm, peace, concern and concerted action at the camp served to show how much can be achieved when, you believe in something and come together with others to try and achieve that which you dream.

Colin Kaepernick has just told the world at large to “Believe in something; even if it means sacrificing everything.” In terms of the action against Shell and Exxon, the camp and our cycle ride, we definitely believed in it, but we didn’t have to sacrifice anything. Instead, we gained from it, meeting, exchanging inspiring and feeling inspired by many new people; cycling our way forward, to a fairer greener world.