Car Free Day Bike & Boat Parade!

Here is the report we sent to www.350.org who want to use pho­tos of this and other events hap­pen­ing across the planet today to pro­ject onto the UN build­ing in New York and let the powers that be know that the people will carry on lead­ing until the lead­ers follow:

“Here in Portobello, Edinburgh, Scotland, the sun shone and 50 folk turned out on their bicycles to cel­eb­rate a world mov­ing bey­ond fossil fuels.

“Another dozen folk on row­ing skiffs from our local row­ing club joined in row­ing along the shore next to the cyc­lists as we pro­cessed to the site of what we hope will become the first com­munity owned urban tur­bine in the UK. The bicycles and boats were full of people of all ages, and the cyclists were led by a bike dec­or­ated as a great green dragon! With earth flags fly­ing and ban­ners read­ing “100% renew­able energy now” we enjoyed the sun­shine and renewed our hope that com­munity action — such as the com­munity orch­ard and other food grow­ing pro­jects we have begun, and insu­la­tion pro­jects and the pro­posed com­munity tur­bine — can help ensure our chil­dren look back with hap­pi­ness at what we have done to ensure their lives are blessed with renew­able energy and renewed communities.”

We were blessed with won­der­ful sun­shine for Car Free Day 2011 (poster here), and we had a good turnout of all ages, earth flags, bikes, scoot­ers and row­ing skiffs.

We met at 2pm at the Cake Stand at the bot­tom of Marlborough Street, waited for the two row­ing skiffs to get ready with their earth flags fly­ing, then set off cyc­ling along the Prom to the beach below the pro­posed com­munity tur­bine site at Seafield. This year Our Car Free Day was held on inter­na­tional ‘Moving Planet’ Day of action (September 24^th.)

Some folk spent the morn­ing at the Orch­ard for the Equinox monthly work day and then cycled down to join every­one for the 2pm start. Others joined the ‘Moving Planet: mov­ing bey­ond fossil fuels’ March and Rally at Holyrood before cyc­ling down to join our bike and boat parade. Others man­aged to fin­ish the shop­ping, or even get out of bed, in time to join us!

We had thought of hold­ing a time trial (see­ing how well a car, a bike, a skate­board, a skiff do racing against each other if none of them are fossil fuelled!) but were informed by the police that all vehicles (except work vehicles) are banned from the Prom — which is a very good thing!

Ok, why not try to guess which of these four pho­tos www.350.org chose to run with, and then think what title they might have given it?

You can find out the photo and the unex­pec­ted title by click­ing HERE!