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About

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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

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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

First cycling days from Strasbourg to Nancy

Candid 16 heinäkuun, 2017 July 14, 2017

On Monday we started cycling from Breuschwickersheim. We had 4 days scheduled to do 155 km, a lot of time to develop a daily routine and to have a buffer in case something goes wrong with the bikes or trailers. We even managed to all leave around 1 pm on the first day, which is a record by far among the last years. Cycling was quite hard despite only doing between 30 and 40 km per day. The summer came back with some really hot sun, and the road went up and down a lot through the Vosges mountain range.…

STRASBOURG ”Le paradiet”

2017 14 heinäkuun, 2017 July 14, 2017

One more summer the Ecotopia Biketour is again on route. On the 28th of June the five of us met in a field at the end of a muddy road, to me it felt like a night like any other one,we were just some travellers gathering around the food and sharing stories. The next morning we moved to a little and cozy terrain called ’Le parediet’, which was the official meeting point. Once there, people slowly started to arrive and things somehow started to get done: thanks to the materials and tools from our host and the people in Maison…

Picking a circuit for the dynamo-powered USB port, part 2

Candid 9 heinäkuun, 2017 August 14, 2017

Ecotopia Biketour 2017 is already under way and updates about how our first days of cycling went will follow soon. One thing that we want to achieve this year is not rely on the electrical sockets of our hosts anymore when it comes to charging the numerous electronic devices that people are bringing on the tour these days. One way to do that is to build a circuit that converts the power coming out of the dynamo of a bike to power that is needed to run a USB port. We have tried to find the best way to build…

Collaborative map tool FacilMap & How we chose the region

luhukasu 15 kesäkuun, 2017 June 20, 2017

Collaborative opensource map tool For the planning of the Biketour, we have an online tool, an interactive, editable map where we can all work together. Anybody who’s been organising this tour can add projects, nice places, interesting events and other relevant things. You can switch on and off marker types and routes you want to look at on the right side of the map. If you click on a marker or a line, it shows you more information like descriptions, contact-details and for routes the elevation profile. Because it’s openly published, this map is a non-editable version of the map. For the…