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
Cycling in the Police State
After the so-called “terrorist attack” in France in November 2015, the French government decided to enter a “state of emergency”, which basically gives the police the right to search your house, check your ID, search you, arrest you, and forbid you to leave your flat as they like. Before the COP21 climate summit in December 2015, this was used to raid the flats of many activists, arrest them or forbid them to leave their houses to prevent them from taking action, and to forbid any demonstrations to happen at all. The state of “emergency” has since been prolonged several times…
La Ferme du Joran (Orbe) and Lausanne
On Thursday July 27, we arrived in Orbe, a small town about 30 km north of Lausanne in Switzerland. We were there to visit a new collective farm, which some of us got to know on the Reclaim the Fields meeting in Freiburg this spring. The farm is called La Ferme du Joran. The Joran is the name of a strong and unpredictable wind from the north-west that is very specific to this geographical location. Our sleeping place was on a field on top of a hill just outside of the town. We arrived quite late and got an introduction…
Switzerland part 1: Freiburg–Orbe
Leaving Freiburg, we cycled switftly along the Rhine to Basel and crossed the border into Switzerland. It is the first time that the Biketour visits Switzerland, it hasn’t ever been there in 27 years. We expected beautiful landscapes and good roads, expensive shops but full dumpsters. The first two days in Switzerland were hard. We had to cross the Jura mountains and took mostly small roads which were very steep, but the landscapes and villages were beautiful. The first night we slept on a lawn just outside a small town, next to a garage for repairing cars and a small…
Freiburg – excursion to Germany
Under a pleasant and strong summer sun we cycled about 30 kilometres from our camping place alongside the Rhine river to Freiburg based in the south-west corner of Germany. We found drivers to be much less polite than in French Vogese and Elsass Regions, people passed grumpily with less safety distance despite empty roads, looking out much less for cyclists (and pedestrians) and beeping their horns at actions that resembled little more than people safely enjoying a cycle ride. *and one driver freaked out when one Ecotopist crossed a red traffic light, that was to manage car traffic and not…