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

May 1st: “Political (Holi)day” or “(political) Holiday”?

anonymous May 7, 2013 May 7, 2013

OK, we were some four to six thousand and they were maybe a hundred, and our noisy and chants of disgust filled the streets much more than their heroic songs could ever do. But: They marched. The Nazi demonstration took place in a suburb of Berlin, protected by german police. The sad thing is that in other places big masses of people crowding in the streets (also referred to as “blockading”) could prevent such events. With the sad impression in mind that we had been many, but yet to few, I went home after their march was over. To get…

Justice, beyond borders

biketour April 25, 2013 April 25, 2013

Some thoughts on this years theme from a participant from 2012 After learning about this year’s “boundaries, borders and beyond” theme through the winter meeting minutes, I took some time to reflect on it and write down some thoughts and ideas that might further a discussion on how to fleshen out the theme and make it more concrete. I think if one goes deeper into the theme philosophically, the real problem isn’t as much borders as such, but closed borders, borders that are not fluid. Where people live together there will always be borders one way or another – think…

Borders Boundaries and Beyond!: Biketour 2013 get organised…

kate April 4, 2013 May 6, 2013

The Ecotopia Biketour Collective united from all corners of Europe for the annual ‘Winter Meeting’ – aptly named due to the location this year in snowy Berlin! We set up camp for the weekend at the Kubiz social centre in true Biketour style, where 12 of us began planning and debating the practical and more theoretical elements of organising this years tour… In keeping with our broad and multi-interpretable ‘Borders’ theme, on the saturday we joined the Refugee’s Revolution Demo, together with thousands of protesters calling for: The End to Deportation Abolition of the outdated Residenzpflicht The end to inhumane Refugee Camps…

Melon melon! Sweet memories from the summer…

alice January 18, 2013 April 25, 2013

Here is the result of a few sessions joyfully reminiscing and picking my favourite few hundred photos (out of thousands) which were taken over our two and a half month journey. From my room here in Edinburgh the tales of adventure we had last summer seem a lot further away than I would like them to be, but seeing these has made them fresh again. Outside there is frost on the ground and it’s wonderful to be taken back to siesta times when it was so hot in the middle of the day that cycling was just not an option! Sometimes it’s hard…