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

The magic waterfall of Trollhättan

Candid July 26, 2015 December 2, 2015

Already before the tour I noticed a town called “Trollhättan” on the map. When I looked it up on Wikipedia to find out about what its name meant (it means Troll’s hat), I read the absurd story of the Trollhättan Falls. The city’s most iconic landmark and probably biggest tourist attraction are the Trollhättan Falls, a huge waterfall in the middle of the city where the river Göta, which goes from Sweden’s biggest and Europe’s third-biggest lake Vänern to Göteborg, falls 32 metres. Unfortunately, a big hydro-electric power station was built next to the waterfall in the 19th century, with…

Jönköping – hot showers, chocolate cake, and other bike tourers

Ecotopia Biketour 2015 July 26, 2015 September 2, 2015

The road into Jönköping was one giant downhill, and at the bottom we arrived at the kulturhuset (http://kulturhusetjonkoping.se/). We were warmly welcomed with hot coffee (and hot showers!) and shown to our sleeping place for the next three nights, a studio room with wall mirrors. And the whole building was quite huge! When we were shown the sleeping room, there were two other bike tourers already in there! It turned out they were touring together long distance and were passing through Jönköping on their way to Uddebo, where we had just come from. Interestingly, they had reclining style bikes, which…

Uddebo Village – alternative living in the countryside

Ecotopia Biketour 2015 July 26, 2015 September 2, 2015

The first stop after Göteborg was the small village of Uddebo (http://uddebo.se/), home to around 300 people. A few years ago this small village was given new life when people from the city seeking alternative ways of living moved there, buying previously empty houses, fixing them up, and giving them new life. Since then, the village has grouped together more to start work on restoring a village building called the yellow house. Currently used as a freeshop and cafe, once restored the building will have many more potential uses. The community has also built a sauna next to the…

We reach Göteborg

Ecotopia Biketour 2015 July 25, 2015 September 2, 2015

Göteborg offered us many different options to fill our 3 day stay in this city. We started with a visit to Kompani 415 (http://kompani415.tumblr.com/) which is workspace for cultural and creative projects. Some of the people working there are writers, some people are making bamboo bikes, and many other different things. One of the projects happening there was preparing wood to build a geodesic dome, which some of the bike group helped with the cutting process. We also gave another presentation about the biketour at the bike-friendly Llama Lloyd cafe (http://www.llamalloyd.se/) where we spoke to some people and gained another…