About
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
> participation guidelines
> awareness
Self-Organisation
> how it’s prepared
> consensus
> circles
Online Tools
> online-tools
> photo-sharing
On the road
> on the road
> tasks & rota
> trailers
> wildcamping
Food
Whenever it’s possible we go dumpster-diving and buy food from local farmers and small shops.
> veganism
> rocket stove
> dumpster-diving
Activities
> skill-sharing
Latest blog posts
Things out of trash and DIY stuff on my bike
The light When I cycle with luggage, I usually have a box on my rack that I can use for stuff that needs to stay dry but easy to access. I particularly use it for electronic devices, there is a small solar panel on it and it is connected to the dynamo charger (more about that below). On the box, there is also an old high-vis that I cut up and wrapped around it for more visibility in the night or in tunnels. On my rack, I have a back light that is powered by the dynamo, but when I pull…
15 Biketour photos that look like from a catalogue
We just went through the photos from the past Biketours and discovered some that are so ridiculously photogenic that they could be from an advertisement!
Charging electronic devices in a sustainable way
On the Biketour in 2015, one very noticeable change compared to the Biketours before was that suddenly many people came with a smartphone. In the years before there had been maybe one or two people among a group of up to 50 who had a GPS or smartphone with them, but now there were even some days where no one followed the route of the scouts, because in every small group of cyclists, there was at least one who was using GPS navigation on their phone. One side-effect was that people needed to charge their phones all the time, and whenever…
Biketour-Shortfilm #2 – EVERYDAY LIVE
But also we realised, that so far, filming wasn’t considered in our photosharing-concept. For some people it is a big difference whether they are filmed and then appear online or if it’s just photos of them. So we added another option about filming to the sheet, that is passed around during the tour.