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

DIY Front Rack

luhukasu March 13, 2018 March 13, 2018

It’s often useful to have plenty of loading options on your bike. So when you find loads of food in the dumpsters for example, you can easily take some and be a bit independent from trailers. It is actually pretty easy to attach a rear rack to the front of your bike. Rear racks can be very easily found in any bike kitchen. You just have to figure out the right size, that it doesn’t touch the wheel. If it messes with your mudguard, you can also just remove it. The front mudguard anyways doesn’t do much. You need to…

Art on Bike

luhukasu November 1, 2017 November 1, 2017

I participated in Ecotopia Biketour this year again. As always, I try to capture some nice moments with pen and paper. It is kind of difficult to find time and space for that within all the cycling, cooking, camping, projects, nice new people or group organising processes. This is the first go of the rocketstove we built in the first days in Strasbourg. This year it is made entirely from trash: A oil-barrel that we received from a restaurant, a piece of an oven-pipe we got in mimir-squat and glaswool that our host had left over. After last year, I…

Pujarnol

2017 October 18, 2017 October 10, 2017

On 13th of September, after 7 km of 5% slope uphill we arrived to Pujarnol, in the north of Girona. Even though of the scary arrival (the dogs were barking as crazy to the bikes) the views compensated it: huge house surrounded by forest, next to an old church and a cemetery. It looked like a castle. A bit of history: the main house is 1000 years old and the last 2 centuries used to be a hostel, where people could spend a night or have a meal. Now it hosts 10 adults and 6 children from different families that…

From Can Decreix to Pujarnol

2017 October 16, 2017 October 10, 2017

In between the projects of Can Decreix (not Candy Crush or Candid’s crash) we had 3 cycling days. The first one was all along the coast going up and down the cliffs and passing through little fishing villages. We left France and entered Catalunya by a mountain pass where we found a memorial about Spanish civil war. The first evening we were welcomed with full dumpsters that provided more than what 20 hungry cyclists can eat in a day. We had a feast in our wild camp, which was an old bunker with view on the sea. The second cycling…