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

Wildcamping in Sweden – with hot showers and a sauna

Candid December 8, 2015 December 8, 2015

On the way from Broddetorp to Loo Östang, the scouts had difficulties finding a good sleeping spot. In the end they chose a lawn next to a football pitch just outside a village. No one was around to ask whether it’s a good idea to camp there, and our Biketour experience tells us that wild-camping really close to a village without asking for permission is normally not a very good idea, and football pitches in particular are not the kind of places the most open to strangers, so we were already expecting that we would be told to leave the…

Biketour in Broddetorp

Candid December 4, 2015 December 2, 2015

Broddetorp is a small village of about 140 inhabitants somewhere between Vättern and Vänern, the two big lakes of Sweden. The Biketour spent the night from the 22nd to the 23rd of July there. Broddetorp got our attention when we were looking for anti-mining groups in the area (there is a lot of uranium and rare earth mining projects going on in that region). We found a group called Nej till Uranbrytning and got in contact with their member Birgitta. A coincidence for such a small village, it turned out that a former participant of the Biketour also lives there. Birgitta was very…

Biketour visiting JAK member’s bank

Candid December 2, 2015 December 2, 2015

On the 22nd of July, Biketour passed by Skövde on the way from Bossgården to Broddetorp. Skövde is a small town of 35 000 inhabitants somewhere in the middle between Vättern and Vänern, the two big lakes of Sweden. It happens to be the place where JAK Medlemsbank, a members-owned alternative bank, was founded in 1965 based on the concept of JAK Denmark, which has existed since 1931. Knowing some alternative banks from other countries, which are a part of the capitalist system just like any other bank, except that they invest their money into more social and sustainable projects, it seemed…

Links #2 – Vio.Me blockade, COP21, bicycle repair man

Candid November 30, 2015 December 16, 2015

Vio.Me successfully blocked and postponed the auction where the factory is supposed to be sold. Vio.Me is a soap factory in Thessaloniki that was squatted by its workers in 2011 and has since been run as a cooperatively and democratically self-organised organic soap factory. We were there with the Biketour in 2014. In Paris, the COP21 (the 21st Climate Change conference of the UN) has started. It will officially last until the 11th of December (but is expected to last longer, like the previous conferences). France already announced in the beginning of November to close its borders in prospect of hundreds of thousands…