From Tapia to Ortigueira

The Biketour has been going on for more than 1½ months now (hopefully someone will write some more blog posts about what happened during that time) and has now reached its last stop on the north coast of Spain in Ortigueira, Galicia, and will from here turn south towards Portugal. We are between 45 and 50 people for quite a while now, which is much bigger than in the last years. The size of the pots is just about big enough to make enough food for everyone, and we now have 3 rocket stoves and 4 trailers with us. In…

Continue reading

Ecotopia in Lakabe

We arrived in Lakabe the fifth of July after a nice swim in the river just before climbing the hardest and last kilometer. As we enter in this old occupied village , a thunderstorm started rumbling in the valley of Arce. Just in time . We are welcomed by Clara, who lives here in Lakabe since approximately one year and a half, and she used to explain us the main operation way of the place. Letś cook ! The last up hill kilometer, so hard ! So tired are we, that we fall asleep fast , but the next day,…

Continue reading

the first 2 weeks of a social expieriment

throw a bunch of very different people together in a group, they are all supposed to be free and equal, add some spicing(=cycling, wildcamping,…) and see what they will make out of it… This is the 3rd time I join ecotopia biketour. During the winter, the organizing team had not only worked on planning the practical aspects of this years tour but also a lot on the theoretical bases. We created a detailed procedure how we would deal with conflicts in future. We wanted to be better prepared than last year, where it took us months to act in a…

Continue reading

DIY Panniers

When you travel with your bicycle it is useful to be able, to carry your stuff on your bike instead of your back. Therefore you can get some expensive bags, that are made for that purpose, or you build something yourself!! In general, there is 2 options: Either you make something that hooks on your rack. Or you have a construction that allows you to easily attatch your backpack or whatever other things you have to transport. For the first option, you can either look for exisiting bags and add some hooks that they can hang on your rack: It…

Continue reading

Starting in Pamplona

It took us seven days to arrive to Pamplona from Barcelona with all the biketour equipment. We had to cross the desert (Los Monegros) cycling in the crazy Spanish heat. Just one hour after we arrived to the “Gaztetxe” (squatted social center in Basque) Las Maravillas other people started showing up asking for Ecotopia Biketour. Perfect timing! At the end of the day we were already more than ten participants. Las Maravillas has been quite recently squatted (less than one year). It is located in the old town in front of one of the main squares where people gather for…

Continue reading

Queer Ecotopia Biketour ?

Story behind, problems, critique 2 years ago we decided to put some keywords on the poster and the flyers to describe the biketour in a short way. We put amongst others as well “Queer” because we felt like it is a significant part of our community – that we are explicitly not only Cis*-hetero-people and that we are opposing heteronormative* society norms. We received critique from members of the queer community, who experienced homophobia on Ecotopia Biketour 2015. I am very set up when i read queer on that poster!!! I think it is a lie. On the ecotopia biketour…

Continue reading

DIY Front Rack

It’s often useful to have plenty of loading options on your bike. So when you find loads of food in the dumpsters for example, you can easily take some and be a bit independent from trailers. It is actually pretty easy to attach a rear rack to the front of your bike. Rear racks can be very easily found in any bike kitchen. You just have to figure out the right size, that it doesn’t touch the wheel. If it messes with your mudguard, you can also just remove it. The front mudguard anyways doesn’t do much. You need to…

Continue reading