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

Biketour update for 2010-06-30

biketour June 30, 2010 June 30, 2010

Halfway through our Seeds of Change workshop on consensus and facilitation, trying to get to the underlying cause of problems we have had # Still in York around the Towards Carfree Cities Conference. Today we have a full day workshop on consensus led by Seeds of Change's Rebecca #

Biketour update for 2010-06-29

biketour June 29, 2010 June 29, 2010

At the TCC conference going on a tour of spaces to play in #

Biketour update for 2010-06-28

biketour June 28, 2010 June 28, 2010

Now we are in York, getting ready to go to the Towards Carfree Cities Conference tomorrow, and thinking about going on a Carfree pubcrawl. # After 2 days of pushing bikes up hills in North Yorkshire we have decided that we should call this the first Ecotopia Walktour # On Saturday night we watched Beauty and the Bike with Darlington Cycle Campaign http://www.bikebeauty.org # Just left Botton Village where we stayed last night and came up a 33% gradient!!! http://yfrog.com/0mr2hj #

Biketour update for 2010-06-27

biketour June 27, 2010 June 27, 2010

First full day of cycling starts after a photo for the Northern Echo http://yfrog.com/0vhqzfj #