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 #3: Painted ponies, tree house elevator, smog in China, AlterTour, Bike Travelling Festival

Candid December 24, 2015 December 22, 2015

Bad Drivers Are Forcing an English Town to Paint Its Ponies Bicycle Powered Tree House Elevator Company Selling ‘Bottled Air’ Sells Out in 4 Days as China’s Smog Crisis Deepens AlterTour, a bicycle tour similar to Ecotopia, have announced their route for 2016: They will cycle from 10 July to 21 August in the north-west of France, starting at la ZAD and visiting many interesting projects on the way. On the weekend of the 16 and 17 January, there will be the International Festival of Travelling by Bike in Paris, France. The event seems to take place in French. While mostly…

Biketour in Oslo

Candid December 20, 2015 December 20, 2015

In the beginning of August, the Biketour stayed in Oslo for 4 full days. It was half-time for the tour, and more than half of the group left, but the same amount of people joined. We stayed at Blitzhuset, a famous anti-fascist squat and social centre. Blitzhuset is open as a volunteer-run vegan café almost every day, and the money earned is donated to political groups in different parts of the world. There is also a big hall with a stage where concerts happen almost every week (outside of the summer holidays). The upper floors are used for different projects such as…

Cycling to Oslo

Candid December 16, 2015 December 16, 2015

After Kampetorp, the Biketour took three days to cycle to Oslo. Entering Norway, things were as different as you could possibly imagine. The part of Sweden that we had previously cycled in was full of forest, with not many people or cars around, and people seemed to live in some kind of unrealistic idyllic dream, where no matter what happens, everyone will always be friendly to each other. Norway seemed to be the opposite – suddenly the roads were so packed of (new and shiny) cars that cycling got much slower, there were people everywhere, one supermarket after each other,…

Biketour in Kampetorp

Candid December 12, 2015 April 10, 2016

At the end of July, the Biketour stayed for two days at Kampetorp, an eco-village in Sweden really close to the southern border of Norway. Getting there was a nightmare – steep gravel roads at about 10°C and heavy rain. But when we arrived we were welcomed to stay in a cosy little red house heated by a fire stove. Kampetorp is a clearing in the middle of the forest where a group of (about 10?) young people have started to live in a communal and sustainable way. People live mostly as families in their own houses, and there is not…