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

Links #9: Space for Cars, Tall Bikes, Guerrilla Bike Lanes, Bike Thief Test, You’re in the Bike Lane

Candid September 8, 2017 August 31, 2017

This ingenious illustration reveals how much space we give to cars Tall bikes will save the world Latvian bike activist create guerrilla bike lanes The Bike thief test in Brussels “You’re in the bike lane”

Joining the AlterTour from Eurre to Saillans

2017 September 4, 2017 August 31, 2017

After Valence we had a short cycle to Eurre, where one of the most exciting part of the tour was awaiting us: We were planning to join AlterTour for three days, a Biketour similar to ours that happens every year since 2008 in France. It is the first time (at least in the last couple of years) that we meet another organised Biketour on the way, and we were very excited to find out what they are doing and how they are different from us. The first night we spent with them in l’Oasis de Serendip in Eurre, a collective…

Valence

2017 September 2, 2017 August 31, 2017

From Roybon we had some nice and fast 20 kilometers of pure downhill until we reached the valley of the Isère again, and followed the bikepath along it and then along the Rhône to Valence. In Valence we had originally not planned to sleep, but some people had gotten in contact with the Poissons Rouges social and art space some days before, and they offered us to camp in their garden for a night. Our main destination in Valence was to visit the Valence Atelier Libre, a self-organised workshop where they build wind turbines, organise workshops to learn how to…

ZAD de Roybon

2017 August 31, 2017 August 23, 2017

On Saturday and Sunday August 5/6, we arrived at the ZAD de Roybon. Some people had preferred to come here directly from Grenoble and not visit the bar collective, so the group split up and arrived on two different days. Roybon is on over 600 metres of altitude, so it was a tough day of cycling to get here. The ZAD is an occupation of a forest to prevent the construction of a huge holiday park called “Center Parc”. The plan is to cut big parts of the forest in order construct a huge dome with a water park at…