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

Spring meeting 2017

Candid May 10, 2017 June 12, 2017

Eleven of us (plus two dogs) met on the week-end from the 14th to the 16th of April in Freiburg, Germany, to work on the preparation of the upcoming Biketour. The venue was the public café of the housing cooperative SUSI. SUSI is several former military barracks that were bought by a collective using the Mietshäusersyndikat, and association that makes it easier to get a loan for buying houses collectively, while at the same time making sure that these houses can never enter the capitalist real estate market again. The complex is huge, with space for 285 people to live and…

ACROBATICS

luhukasu April 28, 2017 June 20, 2017

In this video the participants try the freakbikes of Radi Vidi Pats in Latvia. Different varieties of tallbikes or a tandem where you cycle face to face are pretty strange cycling-expieriences. Or other balance and body control challenges such as pushing another cyclist with the fully loaded trailer up a super steep hill. Or just turnig in circles.

Music by: AWOTT(the beaty one, awott.com/ ) and Trio EMM (the traditional one, facebook.com/TrioEmm/ )

Picking a circuit for the dynamo-powered USB port

Candid April 16, 2017 April 28, 2017

On the Spring Meeting, we did some experiments with different types of dynamo-powered USB ports: Once with a high-dropout DC-DC convertor, once with a low-dropout DC-DC convertor, once with a Zener diode, once with a step-down convertor (an old one, I don’t know which model it is, it cost around 10 €) Once with a double 3300 µF capacitor for boost (as described here), once without Once with a silicon rectifier, once with one made of Schottky diodes We connected these regulators to a Shimano DH-3N30 hub dynamo, and connected a 10 Ω resistor that should simulate the charging device (500 mA at…

Things out of trash and DIY stuff on my bike

Candid April 9, 2017 April 28, 2017

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…