At approximately at 1:30 in the night the bus spits me out at Dijon Gare. I get my stuff together and spot the abandoned bikes around. There is one that looks quite promising and definitely has been there for a long time with a flat tire and dirt piling up under the wheels. Then I make my way through the sleeping town towards Lentillieres Quartier Libre, the place where Ecotopia has arrived the day before.
I see loads of bikes with travel gear parked and some tents pitched in a big house under construction, I am certainly at the good place. At 3 something everybody is obviously sleeping and me I have just enough energy to put my mattress under a random tree and fall to deep sleep.
The next morning I wake up in this beautiful and powerful place that les Lentillieres is. An oasis of resistance and stubborn freedom in the middle of a big city.
I get to know the still fresh group of the Biketour (its been only going for about 2 weeks so far) and meet some unexpected familiar faces. We have a first circle to organise our stay here, talk about when to go to the bike kitchen, when to do work on the fields, some people go to the street theatre festival in Chalon.
I find a buddy to go and liberate a bicycle and some badass gigantic tool for cutting the lock. Which turned out to be unusable because worn out, but luckily I had brought a backup solution: A handlebar. You just stick it into the lock and turn, winding up the cable until it eventually pops open. The bike is free after a few minutes and the flat wheel even holds the air after being pumped. A general checkup, removal of all useless and broken items, exchanging some parts, so that it fits my long body and adding a front rack with a little basket — 3 sessions in the bike kitchen and there you go, a quite decent touring bicycle for 0 euro.
During those few days we become a bit part of the place, we (almost) don’t get lost anymore on the curvy paths through bushes and lovely gardens, around self built cabins and caravans. We make bread with them and take out the weeds in their communal fields for the leaks to be planted. There is a screening of their movie “Ile et une nuit” (movie in 11 languages without subtitles but anyway understandably for anybody!!) 
and then another one because some of us missed the first one. We go swimming during the hottest days at a nice spot in the river. We get to know the new communal equipment that was sent here because too expensive to get it to switzerland and anyway the group was too small before to use all that stuff.
We get to know the new communal equipment that was brought here by one participant and orga member, because too expensive to send it to switzerland to the tour’s start and anyway the group was too small before to use all that stuff. We figure out a system how to carry all that on the trailer and there is also a new innovation this year: Several dry bags to carry parts of the communal equipment on individual bikes. We prepare the route to the next project and distribute the tasks for the first cycling day.
But when we are about to leave, there is mad rain for several hours. Some of us had left before (getting more or less soaked), me and others are waiting it out playing “time’s up”. Eventually the wall of water, lightning and thunder dissolves into a thin curtain of drops and we start cycling (YEAH!) through the wet city. The sun reflects in all the puddles and on the wet leaves of trees. I have a stop to pump some more air in my tires (I wasn’t so confident at first with pumping the old tubes to maximum) and my bike-mates have a blackberry feast!
We cycle through monotonous fields until we find a nice spot for a lunchbreak and swim, a pond with a picknick table and a mysterious phenomena : On the other side, the lake water passes under the path and then with a waterfall it just disappears in a huge hole. Later on a local tells the other people that stayed longer, that it is the entry of an underground river that has been dynamited. Wtf?!
My first wild campsite is at the artificial lake de Villegusien. The waterlevel is super low, probably due to this years drought. A woman from the village informs us about the toxic cyan bacteria in the lake which causes a little run on the showers of the near by camping. We share our highlight of the day around a campfire while grilling corn we had collected from a field on the side of the road. I am super happy being outside, kinda relieved from walls and devices. And the group is also very chill and easygoing.
Next day I am in the dumpster diving team. We check the trash of supermarkets for food and our first stop is already a full success: Loads of chocolate, (“Mon cherie” are vegan!), random junkfood, but also loads of veggies and nice bread. We sort everything out and pack our bikes and are almost ready when the shop manager storms out yelling crazy and filming us “Private property! blabla, illegal, forbidden, put everything back! blablabla” So one of us dumps the obviously visible bag with baby food and we hurry to get away with all the other nice stuff! We have a paranoia moment when a police car slows down next to us but it was probably just because of our general weirdness… Afterwards we split up to look at all the potential food sources of the next town but I find only the usual bread ends you always find at Marie Blanchaire and after I keep cycling alone following the scout’s arrows and the list of villages we are supposed to pass through. The route joins a canal and our destination is next it so I switch to auto pilot and let my thoughts wander around. Until I see some bikes parked further down at some whatever kind of old water management infrastructure . It creates a big basin in the river Marne that flows parallel to the canal. The 2 cyclists are not ecotopian but some teenage girls who enjoy the fresh water. “Ca vous va si je me baigne la aussi?” “Non non, pas de probleme” and they tell me where to climb the fence and the dam to access the swimming spot. I take the time to wash and detangle my hair. Soon others from the group arrive and also (I assume) the mother of one of the girls. We have a nice chat about how it is to live in that area, they have recently moved back to where they grew up, and about how our way of travelling works.
We all arrive pretty early at the campsite and therefor have time to properly set up the camp, cover a picknick table with a tarp, have a tour to harvest wild herbs for dinner and cook to so food is ready before it gets dark. We paint our nails, create a card game from dumpster dived paper and use it to play “the game of 4 hidden cards and you know 2 of them). The problem with it is, that it has as many different names (dutch, cao, cambio, rat a tat cat,…) as sets of rules. That makes the playing quite complicated as we have to agree how to deal with every situation that comes up. Combining this with the games challenge to remember hidden cards totally messes up my brain.
Next day I go on scout duty, which is really easy because we follow the canal the whole day. (Normally that means to mark the road with arrows at every turn to be taken so that everybody can find the way without a navigation device.) So we decide with my scouting-mate to make that cyclingday a bit more fun and we invent a quiz with several questions written along the way. Sadly not all of us found them.
Then we still have another challange actually, which is to find a suitable place for the group to stay the night. One place turns out annoying because a big road passes just on the other side of the river. We then have different options and chose to cycle up a small road that crosses the river Rognon just before it joins la Marne. It is a full success, there is a nice big meadow and access to a decent swimming spot. As we were not sure that the spot was goona be fitting our needs, we hadn’t marked the road to get there. I loose the rock-paper-scissors and go back to make sure everyone can find the way. While making a big arrow on the road at the place where you have to turn, a police car stops next to me and the cops ask me what I am doing. I say that I am making signs so that my friends can follow me. That is illegal! You are not allowed to draw on the road, for safety reasons. Where are you going? Tour de France. And where do you sleep? Some friends host us in the next village. Where? Something-sur-Rognon. They accept my story and drive off. I keep going towards the canal to make sure everyone will find the right exit of the cycling path and make some more arrows. On the way back I crash into them again, this time I am with another Ecotopian. They ask what we are doing, I tell them the same story, if we have our documents with us, me I didn’t bring anything apart a stone to mark the road and my friend explains them that they have issues with their passport and the ambassy. Just that the cops don’t speak english! Stupid cops! So I have to translate for them which makes it all a bit ridiculous and they seem to be ashame. With another legalist lesson they let us go. But I am quite nervous about us being souspicous and that they will try to follow the signs and find us at the campsite. So we decide to hide our tents behind a row of trees and bushes to not be visible from the road and go to another village to fill up the big water canister. Luckily they didn’t show up.
As we are going to Bure and it’s anti-nuclear struggle the day after, we have a circle to check in with everybodys needs regarding police controls. The fight has faced loads of repression and we want to be sure that nobody of the group who is vulnerable will be exposed to that violence. After sharing our needs and long discussion we find an option where everybody feels save but I will not describe our strategy here publicly.
It is crazy how our whole existence is under constant perssure just because we do things out of the norms. Taking food from the trash instead of consuming inside the supermarket, sleeping outside in nature instead of in a hotel or an ugly camping, looking weird on our DIY bikes instead of having brand new ones with fitting bags and sporty outdoor gear, navigating by following the drawn arrows instead of following a GPS,… (of course we also do the normy things and that is ok! We have to top up the found food with bought stuff; the scouts and several other people use Smartphones for navigation, etc)
On the way (still along the canal) it starts raining suddenly very heavily. I am hiding under a bit of roof in front of one of the canal lock keeper’s houses. (by now all are either used by other humans or often abandoned becuase the locks work automaticaly.) There is somebody coming out of the door, inviting me enthusiasticly for a coffee, «or a tea, what would you like?» and as well a random other man that takes shelter with me. And as well my today’s cycle buddy. We enter the cute little house; it is full of plants and very pretty old objects. It turns out that Jean Chavelot is a comic artist and dedicated gardener. We learn about the live along the canal, the absurdity of french burocratie when it is about buying the house and more and more ecotopians pile up in front of the house, all being served tea. He donates lots of comics to us and we get back on the road.
