About

Ecotopia Biketour is a self-organized, international community that has been organizing a yearly bicycle tour in different regions of Europe since 1990. During the tour we visit environmental and social projects and practice forms of activism and sustainable living. We cook communal vegan food, practice consensus decision making, and share skills by doing workshops. One of our core values is to create a non-discriminatory environment. Participants are asked to give a voluntary contribution of 3–5 € per day to cover food costs, but if you cannot afford this you are welcome to join for free! Ecotopia Biketour is for anyone interested in travelling by bike, community life, DIY, an ecological lifestyle, and/or learning by experience. If this sounds good to you, feel welcome to join us!

We try to make the tour as inclusive as possible for any level of fitness or experience with bike touring. We cycle a maximum of 30–70 km per day (depending on the hills), and on average half of the days we stay in a place without cycling. Our experience is that almost everyone can manage this, but there is the possibility to shorten the distances if we discover that it is too much. People cycle in small groups or alone, at whatever speed suits them, and many people like to take it slow and take lots of breaks. A detailed route plan for the day is shared in the morning, arrows are drawn with chalk on the road at every turn, and if you get lost you can always call the Biketour phone. If you have a shitty bike, you will not be the only one, and we enjoy supporting each other if something breaks. We make sure that the last people to leave carry a toolbox, a phone and a first-aid kit in order to assist if anything goes wrong on the road.

Read more about what the Ecotopia Biketour is. If you would like to get an insight into the organisation or just ask a question, contact us.

Biketour concepts

Participation Guidelines

Because we all have different visions of life and diverse personalities, Ecotopia Biketour has developed a set of basic values which helps all of us to create similar expectations from this project.
> participation guidelines
> awareness

Self-Organisation

As we oppose any leadership or hierachical structures, the Biketour is organised in an open way where everyone can be a part of.
> how it’s prepared
> consensus
> circles

Online Tools

We try to use free and open-source software as much as possible in the preparation process. The same goes for sharing photos and videos in the group.
> online-tools
> photo-sharing

On the road

Everyone should be able to cycle with the Biketour. Therefore we keep distances low and have scouts going ahead who mark the route. Everyone can follow the signs on their own level of speed. Any tasks like scouting, cooking or pulling a trailer are shared.
> on the road
> tasks & rota
> trailers
> wildcamping

Food

All communal food on Biketour is vegan and cooked with wood on our mobile rocket stove.
Whenever it’s possible we go dumpster-diving and buy food from local farmers and small shops.
> veganism
> rocket stove
> dumpster-diving

Activities

We plan and make many activities on the tour: skill-sharing, helping at projects, joining actions and protests, bike-fixing and other events.
> skill-sharing

Latest blog posts

Holding Ourselves Accountable

Ecotopia Biketour September 26, 2025 September 26, 2025

For the last two years, 2023 and 2024, something regretful happened that we would like to share, take responsibility for, publicly apologize for, and discuss how we want to work towards building an EBT (Ecotopia Biketour) community where these kinds of situations won’t happen again. The 2024 crisis started when the EBT had planned to visit a project, and only a few days in advance (because our own fault) realized the project would require all participants to register with their legal name and join their association. As some people on tour pointed out at the time, this would make this…

La Prochaine Aire

EBT2025 August 29, 2025 August 29, 2025

La prochaine aire, a word game for being the next rest stop/next era is a project that based in an abandoned canal house that was used for navigation. The town of Joigny used to be a place for the military industry and in the 90’s when that industry left, 10% of the population left leaving the town with many social issues, poverty and empty buildings. In a region mainly holds a right wing conservative population the left activists were looking for a safe space to gather in the outskirt of town and were passing by that abandoned house and realized…

Bure – struggle against the mega-nuclear-waste-dump

lik August 4, 2025 August 4, 2025

Then we enter in the area close to bure, infested with police surveillence and pretty abandoned otherwise. There is almost no cars on the roads, many houses in the few villages are empty or completly falling apart. The perfect place for the gigantic nuclear waste burial project CIGEO (an acronym for Centre Industriel de Stockage Géologique, or Industrial Centre for Geological Disposal). ANDRA (National agency for the management of radioactive waste ) didn’t choose this area because the ground is paticulary suitable to contain the radiating material but rather because it was possible to convince a big part of the…

lentilleres to bure

lik August 4, 2025 August 9, 2025

At approximately at 1:30 in the night the bus spits me out at Dijon Gare. I get my stuff together and spot the abandoned bikes around. There is one that looks quite promising and definitely has been there for a long time with a flat tire and dirt piling up under the wheels. Then I make my way through the sleeping town towards Lentillieres Quartier Libre, the place where Ecotopia has arrived the day before. I see loads of bikes with travel gear parked and some tents pitched in a big house under construction, I am certainly at the good…