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About
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
> participation guidelines
> awareness
Self-Organisation
> how it’s prepared
> consensus
> circles
Online Tools
> online-tools
> photo-sharing
On the road
> on the road
> tasks & rota
> trailers
> wildcamping
Food
Whenever it’s possible we go dumpster-diving and buy food from local farmers and small shops.
> veganism
> rocket stove
> dumpster-diving
Activities
> skill-sharing
Latest blog posts
Hot Springs, Critical Mass and Squat with a view: Biketour in Ourense
After a long and never-ending downhill, the Biketour arrived in Ourense. A major point on our route-planning map were the hot springs in the city, which we were much looking forward to visit (as we decided to take a route that would not pass by the other nicer hot springs in the Gerês National Park). The original plan was to stay for two full days wild-camping next to the springs, but when we discovered that the springs were in between two motorways and a national road in a steep river valley next to an industrial area, we were very happy…
Naked dogs, unasked helpful help, blahblah about blahblah and myself
The water, the lake, the rhythm. Breath in and laugh at the world. Precooked plastic sealed quinoa taboulet. Also other food. Thanks dumpster. The beach, the sun, the wind. Pedal up and keep pedaling up. Pedal up and keep pedaling up. Downhill thrill. But we can’t stay here, go on. Although it was a nice place as many others before. Just a constant humming noise from the factory disturbed the beach-lake-cyclist paradise. And maybe that the natural park contains pine and eucalyptus plantations. And windmills. Us, a threat for their well-being. A cow stands next to the windmill, unable to…
Ortigueira–Ourense
In Ortigueira we left the north coast of Spain to enter the hilly and (according to what everyone told us) hot Spanish inland. Most of Spain is not very hilly, sometimes even flat, but on a quite high altitude. The further north and the further east you are, the higher it is, and in some places in the north-east, the landscape can be completely flat but on more than 1000 metres above sea level. So when you leave the north coast, you first have to go up a mountain pass, but when you arrive on the top, suddenly there are…
Ortigueira
Fourty vegans walk into a house full of skulls. No, this is not the beginning of a joke, it is simply what happened when the biketour entered a home that we had seen advertised on Helpx as a “vegan farm”. The place was pushing the definition of farm, as it was a long-neglected property with a few fruit trees on it, and really overhauling the definition of vegan, as the estate was full of horses and the house itself, full of skulls and animal skins. It was sprinkling rain when we arrived and I rushed to push aside some horse…