Decorated ladies on the road again.

This year I am prepared. My bicycle has brand new tyres so I should be able to cycle the whole route. I will be filling my basket with flowers and pedalling the car-free streets of Bodrum.  The event starts at 4pm tomorrow (Sunday) in the centre of Bodrum. If you were planning to drive through at that time - forget it. It's time to get on your bike. 

Adorned, prettified, bedecked and on a bike - 2016 

Last weekend had me looking frantically for a bicycle pump. My bike had sat unused for at least six months and the tyres were flat - not in a calm, smooth, toneless, low-heeled, unfizzy, unchanging way - in a deflated, airless way.  You can see I've been reading the thesaurus again and it's all due to the Süslü women's bicycle ride on Sunday 25th.  'Süslü' is translated as 'chic' in most English language Turkish publications, but it really means adorned or decorated. Someone in a monochrome Chanel suit would be 'chic' but she wouldn't be 'süslü'. Add a pink feather boa, a pair of fairy wings and a couple of balloons and then she would be 'süslü'.  I held off writing this blog post because I couldn't think of a good word, but hopefully you get my drift. My bike was more süslü than me but I managed some fake flowers in my hair and a charity shop Christian Lacroix jacket, worthy of an early episode of Ab Fab. And why were we dressing up and riding through the streets of Bodrum? Because 4 years ago, Sema Gür, a teacher in Izmir wanted to encourage women to ride bikes, without having to invest in all the lycra and padded gussets that usually go with the sport.

This year 28 cities and towns staged a 'decorated women's bike ride' and as a non political event it managed to highlight a number of important issues including the right for women to ride a bicycle - a freedom recently withdrawn in Iran. The right to wear what we want, whether it be shorts or a hijab. The demand that bicycles be given safe space to ride, rather than taking our life into our hands every time we take to the road in Turkey and the general appeal to get out of the car and on to two wheels.

Cars were stopped for our ride and we were preceded by a traffic cop on a motor bike so for once we experienced perfect riding conditions.  My ride was cut a bit short as I realised that my newly blown up tyres, unlike my enthusiasm, were gradually deflating  and I had to push my poor bike the last few hundred metres home.

Now it's Time for Bikes - Şimdi Bisiklet Zaman

I arrived back safe and sound but chilled to the bone on Saturday.  Winter temperatures were blowing down from the North sweeping away all remnants of summer and leaving us shivering.  I avoided seasickness  by copious consumption of dried ginger from Hydra to Piraeus, keeping completely horizontal from Piraeus to Kos and completely vertical from Kos to Bodrum.  It seems I can control by nausea  as long as I don't bend in the middle.

                    

Our village house is not suited to the cold so we decamped to Bodrum on Sunday where I had planned to take part in a bike ride from the town centre to Gümbet. The event was advertised on Facebook calling riders to meet in the centre of Bodrum to  remind the local authority that despite plenty of bikes in Bodrum we don't have cycle lanes. 

Or if we have a cycle lane, it is used as a parking lot for pizza delivery scooters. 

There was a serious amount of lycra on show and I realised that there was no way I'd keep up with these keen cyclists; I hadn't even remembered my bicycle clips, so I took a few photos and watched them set off in convoy following a cop on a motorbike.  My Raleigh "ladies'" bike only has 3 gears so I wouldn't have got half way up the hill but I wished them luck in their campaign and hopefully the mayor can get these scooters moved so that we at least have a few hundred yards to cycle safely in Bodrum. 

You can sign the petition here if you wish

P.S.  If you are heading for Bodrum, the temperatures are now racing back to normal. It should be 28 or 29 degrees C by the week-end.