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

One month to go…

taborda June 5, 2012 June 5, 2012

The biketour is just around the corner, starting one month from now! Phew how time has flown away, but loads of things have happened during our preparations… We have made many many contacts, via internet, friends and travel, our route has almost finished taking shape (although there will still be major changes!) and the word is being spread (any help is welcome). Now it’s the time to confirm all the places we will visit, and work on detailed maps of the route. Along our route in Catalonia we will visit some really inspiring self-managed agro-living projects, in France we will…

Join us this summer – register now!

alice May 7, 2012 June 13, 2012

(for versions of this text in other languages click here) Ecotopia Biketour 2012: Towards Degrowth (6th July – 19th September) – Join us! We are very pleased to announce that registration for the biketour 2012 is open! The Ecotopia Biketour is an eco-mobile do-it-yourself activist community which cycles through Europe each summer. This year our journey takes us through Catalonia, the South of France and Northern Italy and our theme is degrowth, challenging the damaging mentality of growth which overlooks real social and environmental values. We will visit projects, collectives and people who are experimenting with alternatives to growth, learn…

One month on…

biketour March 14, 2012 March 14, 2012

Hello ecotopia biketour friends, João and Alice, our international coordinators, have been in Barcelona for one month already, they have had many incredible adventures and felt like blogging about what they’ve been up to: We have spent the first few weeks mainly trying to get contacts (an endless task) and looking for concrete places and projects to pass by. We have been working out important dates (registration, starting and end dates, big stops) and making a big tasks plan (website, route details, wiki organisation, propaganda, video, etc…). These are all happily up on the wall in Research and Degrowth’s office…

Get ready for BT 2012 – ‘towards degrowth’

alice February 15, 2012 July 4, 2012

You will be happy to hear that preparations for the 22nd Ecotopia Biketour are now in motion and we would like to invite you to get involved. From July to September, Ecotopia Biketour will cycle from Catalonia to Italy, connecting projects, sharing skills, confronting destructive development and living as an eco-mobile action community. Our theme this year is degrowth and we plan to visit permaculture farms, D.I.Y bike workshops, protest camps, ecovillages, intentional communities, ecological/cycling NGO’s, bicycle events, protests, grassroots projects, and other creative alternatives to the damaging growth mentality of capitalism. As usual, each day we try to live as a self managed community on wheels,…