Organise BT 2010

Route

Consensus

We have a strong on-line consensus to go to Ecotopia? [[1]] near Berlin – lots of people agreed, even if there where other suggestions - see further down. And there is a weak on-line consensus to start from the "Towards Carfree Cities Conference" (TCCC)[[2]] in York/UK, maybe starting earlier or ending later. That means that this proposal did not get any objections in a one week period, but till now it was only promoted by Jan and Milan. And WCN [[3]], organizers of TCCC, where really enthusiastic to join forces :-) u can read some reasons to take the UK route from a chat protocol

Next Questions for the UK route

Now we need to figure out, how to cross the channel.

• There is the ferry from Hull, UK to Hook-of-Holland or Brugge, which is 44 pounds per person

How many km would that be ? How would the route look like ?

• There might be a train ticket from London to Amsterdam for 29€, Jan heard rumors about it and is following it up
• 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 ? Maybe we should wait with that till our website looks fresh.

• We also need ideas how to come to the tour, how to reach York or any other 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 ?

• Possible Partners/ Interesting Places on that road – please add your ideas and the answers u got:

• • who would like to coordinate the Tour in The Netherlands ? We have quite some dutch people on the bt-org list. It is the bike country of Europa, with Groningen as best example city – 50% of all trips on bike. In Groningen there is Marji, a bt-veteran and other ecotopia people.

• • We need contacts in the UK. Who can contact Lithuanian Kristina ? Barry – well he is Irish, but still. Ask WCN for contacts ? http://otesha.org.uk/ ? London Critical Mass ? The organizers/hosts of the 2002 tour ? This massive bikesoundsystem, what was the name again ?

• • in Germany we can cooperate with janun[[4]] for lower Saxony. Someone up to coordinate things ? Jan has the contact of Arne, a janun and bt veteran. Also there is the wendland on the way, a region which resists an atomic waste dump since decades. And the ecovillage „sieben Linden“ could be on the route. Jan and Moritz currently live in Germany.

• • What about Belgium ? Luxembourg ? Jan has good contacts there. Bt has never been there, at least not this millennium. But its hilly and a bit out of the way.

Other Route Ideas

here is a list of the other ideas we had. Especially the France/Switzerland/Germany idea keeps popping up. If u want to give energy to any of these or propose another rocking variant , please write a mail to the Bt-org list or to info@ecotopiabiketour.net if u are not on the list. But don´t wait til tomorrow, as we are already making contacts for the UK route.

Proposal by Laura, partly based on Felt the heat!. Daniël added distances.

1. Eupatoria to Ecotopia (Black Sea, Ukraine to Chernobyl to the Ecotopia (1 - 21 Augus) in Germany)
   • minimal 2200 km (Sebastopol-Flaeming)
2. Tallinn to Berlin (ecovillages in all baltic countries - this could be adapted depending on what country co-ordinators could be found for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus....Poland, Germany)
   • Kaliningrad? (=Russia) -- Eiland 12:27, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
     1650 km.
3. Ireland to Ecotopia? in Germany, through towards car-free cities conference in York, England! (Which is 28 June - 1 July 2010, nice timing).
   • York-Flaeming is 1350 km, for that there is approx. 40 days without resting days
4. Switzerland to Ecotopia (potentially through Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic). This would include countries never before ridden through on biketour! Not to mention going thru some spectacular scenery at the start of the trip in the Alps.
   • 750-850 km
5. Switzerland to Spain,The EYFA climate camp in Spain! There would also be plenty of eco-villages/eco-projects/wwoof communities on this route.
   • Zürich-Barcelona is 1050 km
     EYFA camp @Barcelona is planned first week of July.
     climate action camp with large anti-GMO focus

   Maybe better the other way around? Or to Ecotopia 2010? Thats 1800 km. approx 30 days...

NOTE Kms are in minimum. aim is to make max. 50 km per cycling day. And biketour does not take the most efficient route. Also, it is good to plan one resting day every 4 days of cycling.