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

Drawings

luhukasu December 13, 2016 December 13, 2016

Hello world, this is Lukas writing to you. I’ll show you some drawings I made on the tour. I tried to find myself some trash to transform into art. Like old books or any piece of paper. “Out of trash!” As cycling is somehow the main thing on the biketour, I wanted to do drawings of this as well! So I had to draw while cycling… It was quiet a challenge because of the bumpy roads and the always moving models. www.lukasseite.wordpress.com

Free Riga!

luhukasu November 17, 2016 November 17, 2016

We reached the our first host in the latvian capital shortly before midnight after our hardcore cycling day. It was the Kreicbike-workshop. A place where loads of crazy custom- and freakbikes are built. Also motorized ones. It was an impressive place with tons of tools and equipment. They were also related to Radi Vidi Pats, the other freakbike-workshop we were visiting earlier in Liepaja. Unfortunately, here we didn’t feel as well as we did there. It was not a very comfy place to sleep and to hang out. And we were facing sexist and macho behaiviour by the guys using…

2 days, 180 km, 3 punctures, 1 thunderstorm

luhukasu November 17, 2016 November 28, 2016

After having survived the hippie-festival the biketour was heading Riga. We had 2 days to make the ~170km. Quiet tough, regarding that normally, we do normally between 40 and 80 kilometers per day… But we had a good road and not really any questions about the way. Just all the time along the coast. Never ending pinewoods on both sides of the road, every now and then a tiny village. Just cycling and cycling and cycling, meeting others having their break aside the road or on the beach, passing them, meeting someone else pulling a trailer, having a break and…

Biketour-Inventary

Ecotopia Biketour 2016 November 14, 2016 April 28, 2017

On the long cycling days… you might find yourself talking about anything and everything with your companions for the day. One topic that came up was STUFF. some people seemed to have just 2 bike bags and nothing else, some people have entire trailers for their pet (see past posts with the dog!) whilst some people seemed to be balancing half a dozen stuff sacks on their racks (ahem.. me). A few of us made comparive lists of our personal equipment and decided to publish them – this could either be read as a packing list guide (or, what not…