Route 2010

Overview

The Ecotopia Biketour will move from Northern England, through France, Belgium, (maybe the Netherlands briefly) and Germany. See the rough route on googlemaps It will be about 1600km long, which is shorter than last year's and we'll take a little more time to do it (a bit over two months). (Hopefully it's an improvement...ah, don't you love learning from lessons!)

Places + events + dates we are planning for so far:

ENGLAND:

• Fri 25th June - Critical Mass, London, England - starts at 6pm at South Bank, under Waterloo Bridge south (for those coming from continental europe.... arriving in St Pancras international is fine!)

• Sat 26 June - people travelling from London go by train (we have 15 tickets from London to York, including 5 to Northallerton booked already and will probably take a local train from there to somewhere... We have 15 cheap tickets which will be taken by the first 15 people who register to join the biketour from the start. If you register later the tickets will be more expensive.)

• The meeting/start point in the afternoon of Sat 26 June: somewhere in North Yorkshire tbc, hopefully just a nice short ride for everyone to the first sleeping place somewhere nearby. Please suggest possibilities in this area! (Northallerton - surroundings or further....)

• Sun 27 & Mon 28 June - ride from North Yorkshire to York via indirect route - approx 100km - we still need sleeping places on this section of the route - contact us if you have any ideas!

• Tues 29 June - York: participate in the "Open day" at the Towards Carfree Cities Conference IX [1]

• Weds 30 June - York: Biketour Concensus Decision Making workshop led by Seeds for Change [2] Starting 9:30am - 5pm. There are also social events in the evening each day we are in York.

• Thurs 1 & Fri 2 July - ride York to Leeds - 45 km; rest/visit/workshops (or visa versa)

• Sat 3 July - in Leeds: same time as UK Climate Camp gathering (meeting)

• Sun 4 July - Leeds-Sheffield - 60km

• Mon 5 July - Sheffield-Wincle (near Buxton) - 50km

• Tues 6 July - Wincle-near Stoke - 30km

• Weds 7 July - Stoke-Huntington Lane Camp (near Telford) - 55km

• Thurs 8 & Fri 9 July - two days at Huntington Lane Camp - [3] - for rest days, or optional visit by train to Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales [4], or action that we organise

WALES

• Sat 10-Mon 12 July - ride Huntington Lane Camp-Abergavenny - 130km - we still need sleeping places on this section of the route - contact us if you have any ideas!

• Tues 13 July - rest day, including some helping on the organic farm at Abergavenny Gaia Coach Institute - [5]

ENGLAND AGAIN

• Weds 14 & Thurs 15 July - ride Abergavenny-Bristol - 65km - or maybe ride all distance one day, start activities in Bristol one day earlier

• Fri 16 July - day of visits to local projects/organisations in Bristol

• Sat 17-Weds 21 July - ride Bristol-Portsmouth (150km) - we still need sleeping places on this section of the route - contact us if you have any ideas!

• Thurs 22 July - take the ferry to France! (Portsmouth 0830-Le Havre 1245) we have paid for 20 cheap tickets for cyclists for this ferry - these will be used by the first 20 people to register. After these might not be space for any more cyclists or you might have to pay more or take a different ferry, so register as soon as possible!

FRANCE

• 22nd July - 1st August Camp Action Climat (french climate camp [6]) near Le Havre, France.

• Dieppe (?) something to do with nuclear!

• 6-7 August - Ruisseauville "A petits pas" [7] Environmental education, eco-construction

• 8 August - Landrethun le Nord (?) eco-construction "Le Chenelet"

• 9-11 August - Calais No Borders camp

• 12 August - Herzeele (?)

BELGIUM

• 14th August - riding to Oostende, Belgium.

• 15th August - Oostende. Climate event: "Big Ask" for a climate law, big dancing lesson on the beach, political panel discussion and arts, concert with Cold Cut as part of the "Energy Union Tour". GOOD PLACE TO JOIN THE BIKETOUR (Laura thinks so)

• 16th August - Gent. Staying in a squat in Merelbeke!

(? action + workshop) 17th August - Gent.

(? action) *17th - 18th August Brussels - action against the brussels ring road?

(? possible) *19th - 20th August Nethen (30 km from Brussels) Permaculture festival www.festivalpermaculture.be

(? dates) *21-22nd August Hasselt, action with newly formed local Friends of the Earth group

NETHERLANDS

(?maybe earlier) *23rd August - staying somewhere in the netherlands near Maastricht / Sittard / Geleen & meeting up with dutch people to cycle to the klimacamp!

GERMANY

• 24th August - We will arrive to the klima camp in Borschemich-Erkelenz, Germany!!

• 25th August - Bike-action day with the klimacamp

• 21st-29th August [http:/www.klimacamp2010.de/ Klima Camp], Borschemich-Erkelenz, Germany.

• 30th Ride Erkelenz - Cologne

• 31st Cologne An evaluation on our successes, concrete suggestions on improvements and planning for next year's tour .... and then an ecotopia biketour 20th anniversary reunion party !

Activist/Ecologist Events in north-western europe, summer 2010

How did we come to this proposal? We decided to evaluate all events, camps and gatherings together, instead of automatically going to an Ecotopia gathering now. After lots of broad brainstorming and discussion, and an amazing compilation of activist events near the general route proposals, we came up with what you can see above. See the larger list of possible events here: http://btwiki.ecobytes.net/Possible_Activist_Events_for_BT2010. Please add anything else that you hear about! The list can also be seen on an open edit google map at http://bit.ly/ceNwc6

Next Questions for the route: UK

We will be riding in the UK from 26th June to around 20th July, from Northern England to (probably) Portsmouth to take a ferry to France - at the moment what is needed most in the UK are co-ordinators, hosts for 1-2 nights and route testers for smaller 2-3 day chunks of the route along the way. The exact route will be determined by the people who come forward to do this, so please contact us if you'd like to get involved.

How to get to the start point:

• Some advice on taking bikes on trains between the UK and other European countries here: http://www.seat61.com/bike-by-train.htm The information is mostly suitable to people coming from the UK, but just read it the other way round!
• We need more ideas how to come to the tour, how to reach our starting point by cheap bike friendly transport on the surface, as there are the German wochenend ticket, mitfahrzentralen/ ride sharing, night train offers, the Czech bus student agency (do they take bikes?) Who wants to expand the list and fill it with details ?

Best ways to get from the UK to the continent:

• Mark has done some price research on all the possible route to France, Belgium & Netherlands http://bit.ly/dzeFXJ The cheapest ferries are the ones from Dover, and tickets get more expensive further away.
• School holidays in England and Wales start Fri 23 July so we should cross the channel before then to get cheaper tickets.
• We also need to consider using a bus/van if it makes taking bikes on the ferry cheaper
• It is possible to hitchhike ferries – we could reserve some days for it, so the whole group has time to give it a try. Who could check out, which ferries work well, how it works and stuff ?
• We could also ask the ferry company to sponsor us, give some free transport or at least a discount. Someone up for checking that out ?

Route questions for the rest of Europe

• Who would like to co-ordinate the first few days in France ? probably around Caen
• Qui voudrais co-ordonner les premiers jours en france ? (probablement aux alentours de Caen)

• who would like to coordinate the Biketour in Germany? This is a small role, as the route will be very small!

For Belgium, google fietsroutenetwork or see http://www.fietsnet.be/routeplanner/ with 18000 km of bikeroutes in Belgium. And I'll ask around in my Maastricht web for Dutch contacts as it seems bt will go through south of limburg - Daniël.

Route Ideas 2011

Ideas for 2011 include baltic states, belarus, ukraine, switzerland, italy, greece...If you have ideas for 2011, however crazy, or if you are interested in being a regional or international co-ordinator, please do so on the bt-org or biketour lists, or write to info[at]ecotopiabiketour.net It's really helpful (for themselves) for people interested in being co-ordinators next year, to join the tour for at least a week this year! Also contact us if you're interested in doing an EVS (European Voluntary Service) project as the ecotopia biketour.