Booklet/Aims of the Biketour

While the Biketour originally started as a way of getting to the Ecotopia Gathering, maybe doing some environmental actions on the way, the focus has now shifted much more on how we live together and what projects we visit on the way.

Currently, the Biketour seems to have mainly four types of impact:

• Skill-sharing: We try to learn from each other on the way and share skills with the projects that we visit. People who have never fixed a puncture or cooked for a group before will for sure know how to do it after joining the Biketour. During our work in projects, we learn about constructing, gardening and other things and can share our experiences with our hosts.
• Supporting local initiatives: For the small farms and eco-villages where we sometimes sleep, it can be quite helpful when a big group of people comes by to help with any kind of work that needs to be done. When visiting political groups, we sometimes join and help to prepare their actions.
• Networking: We make connections between each other, between our hosts and us, and even between different hosts (even across the years). When we visit a group or project, we often have stories to tell from similar initiatives that we have visited before or that individuals among us are part of. As we all come from and have cycled in parts of Europe and the world, we often manage to put our hosts in contact with similar-minded projects in other parts of the world who have not yet heard of each other.
• Setting an example: Moving and cooking without fossil fuels, making decisions by consensus and trying to live without hierarchies, the Biketour shows a way to live and travel in a both environmentally and socially sustainable way. Not only do other people see us and copy some of our concepts, but most of us return home having gained a lot of community experience, which they can use to improve the groups and communities that they are part of.