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 beauty of a rainy summer in the Balkans

Bike Bel August 9, 2014 August 9, 2014

This summer has been uncharacteristically wet here. In both Bulgaria and Serbia, locals would expect to be sweating in the midday sun, not dripping from yet another unpredictable shower. Alas, it’s raining constantly. In Kosovo, a downpour on the first night almost caused a flood and another disrupted a open air workshop. Now, in Macedonia, all the rumours have been that a storm is coming any minute now! Yet, being who we are, we decided to look on the bright side of things. So here are ten reasons why we are HAPPY it is so damn rainy! 1 Water sources…

Foreigners with puppy stray among protesters (Video)

Candid August 9, 2014 March 3, 2017

Ecotopia Biketour made it on the news today, although in a very unusual way: Three foreigners with bikes made the usual iconography of Friday protests in Skopje. They were cycling around Bit market today and suddenly found themselves amidst the protesters, wondering where they had gotten lost. Organizers of the protests and police quickly pointed out that they should get on the road. Translation by Google Translate News link, YouTube link

The power of personal connections

sml August 8, 2014 October 21, 2014

One lesson for Biketour organising out of 2024 is how much personal connections matter. For people involved in the process could see a clear distinction between project visits that had been arranged only via online-communication and those where we were able to meet the people beforehand. Very special were those where people very actively welcomed us because participants from Biketour 2013 had afterwards spent some months there. One such place was AKSC and other groups in Skopje, Makedonija – another one Rovies in Greece. By spending the winter in Skopje and afterwards the first month of Biketour 2014 organising in…

Impressions of Kosovo

Candid August 7, 2014 August 15, 2014

On the 31st of July we cycled through a valley in south-eastern Serbia towards the border of Kosovo. Some small villages every couple of kilometers, not a lot of people on the streets, barely any traffic. The night before it had already felt weird to see a big truck or bus making their way into the darkness of the mountains every now and again, not really seeming like there was much to go to. The further up the hill we went, the more quiet it became, until suddenly we saw a big queue of trucks on the road waiting to…