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

We have route!

Ecotopia Biketour March 25, 2023 June 29, 2023

In 2023 we are travelling from Welten to Bucharest! We will be visiting the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair in Ljubliana (Slovenia) and then head towards Romania, passing through Croatia and Serbia. Along the route we will be visiting several hosting projects, ending the tour in Bucharest. In the first 4 weeks of the tour, we will be inviting all QINTAW people (queer, inter, non-binary, trans, agender and women) and ask endo-cis-hetero men to join from Novi Sad onwards. We are super excited to bike in Eastern Europe. And we are still keeping our eyes open for projects, so if you…

From Lyon to La Voulte with a visit to the gorges of the river Doux

Candid September 7, 2022 September 7, 2022

Leaving Lyon was more difficult as expected. One of our trailer attachments had broken in half, and a shop selling this piece was not in sight. So some of us went to the construction store in the early morning to find anything that could be useful as a temporary solution, and just when we had succeeded improvising a replacement part, we realised that an important part of the trailer had actually broken apart and needed to be fixed as well. Navigating out of a big city is always difficult, and the Via Rhona long-distance cycle route along the river Rhône…

some thoughts on the LGBTQIA+ & FLINTA start

Ecotopia Biketour September 2, 2022 September 16, 2022

This year, for the first time on the ecotopia biketour, part of the tour was LGBTQIA+ & FLINTA only (non-mixed, without hetero cis men). For the first 3 weeks of the tour, hetero cis men were not invited to join the tour. The other 9 weeks of the tour are open to all genders and sexual orientations, including hetero cis men. More about the reasons behind this decision are here, but a short summary goal of the would be: An attempt at a creation of a temporary space with less sexism/heterosexism/cissexism, with the hope that it would have a positive…

Self-organised refugee squat, smoothie bike and a huge collection of bike parts in Lyon

Ecotopia Biketour September 2, 2022 September 2, 2022

We arrived in the evening in Lyon at a squatted Villa in the Sans Souci quarter. There we were greeted by a few of the house’s residents, the majority of which come from Guinea. They have been living in the house for about 3 years. We set up our tents in the garden with the chickens and fell asleep to the noisy city sounds in the background. We woke up refreshed the next morning and had a circle (our word for a meeting) and discussed various topics, including alcohol consumption within the group, what we are doing in Lyon and…