Category: Biketour experiences

A Small Review On Bike Stands

The last day of leaving Estonia was when my two year old Ortlieb paniers broke apart and I had to tape them. I hope to get a refund but WTF they claim to be so reliable… This is not the first of my technical material to be broken on this biketour, and here we enter the main point of this blogpost: the bike stands. There are two schools of biketourers: One which bikes lay against trees, and the other where, after a fancy backwards move of the cyclist’s leg, the bike stands elegantly in the middle of the field, like…

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Difficult Times – Helsinki to Turku 01.07.-06.07.2024

i think we like to keep it fresh and lighthearted here on the blog. and it’s true that even the more difficult periods of ecotopia are aften funny or at least make a good story when you look back at them. to quote a good ol’ proverb: bad news make a good story. but let’s not make it sound prettier than it was this time. the first two cycling days were HARD, chaotic and utterly exhausting. one person had a bad bicycle accident in helsinki on the day before we started and looked r o u g h, wounds and…

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Finding Solace in Solis – Helsinki 25.06.-01.07.2024

i feel as though my brain cells are rotting and expanding at the same time. the crew we have and the company we keep know how to get things done, are nerds in various topics, and together our skills are (almost) endless. but we do not forget to also have fun and laugh and to communicate across culture and language our weird senses of humour. in the north of helsinki we were greeted so warmly and with such hospitality by some of the people from solis who generously hosted us in their garden for a week. we were fed fresh…

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Rolling through Czech countryside

On our first cycling day we left Prague to go Northwest to a farm with alternative people called Mlyn, where we camped on a field full of edible plants equipped with a teepee! We finished our rocket stove with the material help from the place. We also went to a lake under the local castle ruin that turned out to be just a field of reed so instead of swimming we had a discussion about how to facilitate a biketour circle. On the second evening a person from the house took us to a village for a taste of local…

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Ecotopia 2021 – Beginning in Praha

Hello Ecotopians! After a year of break, the tour is back on the go again! We began a few days ago in Praha, dwelling at K11 guesthouse which is a social center that hosts alternative bands and communities along the year. The first day we visited “Bike Kitchen Praha” where we fixed and prepared our bikes for the tour, met the organizers who explained about the project and had some delicious local lemonade. On our way back we dumpster dived in the local market getting food for dinner. Today we had our first circle and meeting of the group, to…

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Tall Bike Tour

At the end of August 2018 I built a Tall Bike and cycled it 250km from Copenhagen to Växjö, to start my studies. Here’s a spoken word-esque account.     Bike touring by yourself on a tall bike (with no spare parts and minimal tools) is two things: 1. Astoundingly beautiful. 2. Existentially terrifying. I saw the tops of trees flickering copper, gold and crimson silver in the sun and happened upon a goth’s picnic on some forest roadside. They looked embarrassed for me, having heard me singing moments before. There was tarmac melted into long cracks in the road…

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Quest For Rocket Stoves

With the skies above our camping place threatening rain and thunder and with two days left before we were to leave Edinburgh, the heart of the bike tour was missing. The heart of the bike tour is an ugly-mangled thing. We crouch beside it at night, offering up endless twigs and sticks, blowing on it our hopes for hot food. The heart of the bike tour is a rocket stove. It is made from a large oil drum, piping and insulation. We had two vegetable oil drums, found at the back of a restraunt. We still needed to find some…

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Quand la route devient chez toi

vélo couchée avec remorque Le temps que je passe en Ecotopia Biketour restent comme un tat des aventures tres denses dans ma tete. J’ai du mal a en sortir des expierences specifiques, quest qui vaut la peine de raconter et quoi non? quelle des milles histroires choisir? soir de deluge ptet celle-ci: on arrive apres une journee de decentes et montees le long des falaises asturiennes sur une pre pas loin de la mer. Une reunion est prevue, finallement, quand les gens se sont rassemblees, on fait un tour de paroles, quelqu’un dit: „je vois pas comment on va faire…

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