After Valence we had a short cycle to Eurre, where one of the most exciting part of the tour was awaiting us: We were planning to join AlterTour for three days, a Biketour similar to ours that happens every year since 2008 in France. It is the first time (at least in the last couple of years) that we meet another organised Biketour on the way, and we were very excited to find out what they are doing and how they are different from us. The first night we spent with them in l’Oasis de Serendip in Eurre, a collective…

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From Roybon we had some nice and fast 20 kilometers of pure downhill until we reached the valley of the Isère again, and followed the bikepath along it and then along the Rhône to Valence. In Valence we had originally not planned to sleep, but some people had gotten in contact with the Poissons Rouges social and art space some days before, and they offered us to camp in their garden for a night. Our main destination in Valence was to visit the Valence Atelier Libre, a self-organised workshop where they build wind turbines, organise workshops to learn how to…

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From Grenoble, we cycled on a beautiful bikepath through the mountains along the Isère river. At some point, we left the river to cycle into the mountains, through some tunnel, along another small river that came out of a steep canyon. We entered the Royans region and passed a very touristic small village. Our destination for the day was Saint-Eulalie-en-Royans, where a collective of 8 people and some volunteers are running a bar called La Pied de Nez. It is very nice there, lot of beautiful landscapes around and this place has some cool events. They have a rented house…

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Saturday we passed a beautiful landscape with a scenic view of the Mont Blanc massiv to arrive around noon in Lausanne. The expensive city offered us nevertheless a bike kitchen that had invited us and we repaired our bikes inside and on the pavement. The mountain passages had taken its toll. Some of us went to the Musee de Art Brut and greatly enjoyed it. Others went swimming in Lac Leman and a small public bath. In the evening we were invited again by a local theater space in the rue d´ industrie 10. We ate together the excellent vegan…

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After the so-called “terrorist attack” in France in November 2015, the French government decided to enter a “state of emergency”, which basically gives the police the right to search your house, check your ID, search you, arrest you, and forbid you to leave your flat as they like. Before the COP21 climate summit in December 2015, this was used to raid the flats of many activists, arrest them or forbid them to leave their houses to prevent them from taking action, and to forbid any demonstrations to happen at all. The state of “emergency” has since been prolonged several times…

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Leaving Freiburg, we cycled switftly along the Rhine to Basel and crossed the border into Switzerland. It is the first time that the Biketour visits Switzerland, it hasn’t ever been there in 27 years. We expected beautiful landscapes and good roads, expensive shops but full dumpsters. The first two days in Switzerland were hard. We had to cross the Jura mountains and took mostly small roads which were very steep, but the landscapes and villages were beautiful. The first night we slept on a lawn just outside a small town, next to a garage for repairing cars and a small…

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