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

Cycling along Nemunas

Candid August 9, 2016 April 28, 2017

From Kaunas we had several days to cycle along the Nemunas river to the coast. We camped on some beautiful beaches on the way. From Kaunas, a perfect bike path led us out of the city for about 20 km. We didn’t meet a single person on the way, and no one in Kaunas seemed to know about this path. Eventually, the bike path turned into a sand road and then into a small foot path, which at one point crossed a river on a bridge so narrow that we had to lift the trailer over the railing. The worst…

Biketour in Kaunas

CharlieCharlie August 8, 2016 September 8, 2016

From SapfoFest it was just one short day to cycle to Kaunas. On Sapfo we had already met a lot of people from Kaunas, and it turns out there is a lot going on in that city! We had been given a free campsite for two nights, which turned out to be a bit of field behind the official campervan site, underneath a busy motorway, but hot showers are always appreiciated regardless. We pitched our tents and headed to the co-operatively run pizza place in the city, run by the same group as catered the SapfoFest. We all piled in…

Queer Festival Fun!!

CharlieCharlie August 7, 2016 April 28, 2017

Two days cycling from Vilnius, we reached Žeimiai Manor House, location of Sapfo fest, the first fixed date that we made in the biketour calander when we were planning biketour 2016. Sapfo-fest is the first independent community-initiated Festival in the Baltics, which seeks to connect and empower the queer community, fight prejudice and discrimination, as well as increase awareness and visibility of queers in Lithuania and the rest of Eastern Europe – and has now happened for the fifth time. A lot of the biketour participants were super exicited for this festival. We arranged to arrive a day early to help…

Biketour in Vilnius

Candid August 5, 2016 August 5, 2016

Next, to Vilnius. Back to cycling (legally..) on the roads! We first camped in the back of park in the centre, but it was quite exposed – it was below a tourist viewpoint, and now the scruffy cyclists with their tents, small dog, and giant pots were the newest tourist interest. We also got woken up by Italian segway tour guides with megaphones. The next day, whilst half the group huddled under the tarp from the rain (apparently it had actually followed us from Belarus) another person in the biketour met a friendly local who offered us space in his flat!…