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.
Places/events we are going to so far:
- 25th June 6pm Critical Mass, London, England - starts from under Waterloo Bridge south (for those coming from continental europe & south-east england!)
- 26th June (saturday) travel together to North Yorkshire: by a coach we organise, or catching trains north from London in the morning, in teams of four (four bicycles allowed per train).
27 & 28 June - from North Yorkshire to York - approx 75km
- 28 June - 1 July Towards Carfree Cities Conference IX - York, England (to clarify, we'll participate in the "open day" on the 29th June, and then the 30th June will be our own workshops, skill-shares and activities day in York. We will start cycling south on the 1st or 2nd July.)
- 1 July - York-Leeds 45km
- c 2-3 July - Leeds - Sheffield 60km
- c 4-7 July - Sheffield to Telford via Peak district (we have a local organiser for some of this) 120 km
- c 8 July - rest/action day
- c 9-11 July - Telford - Oxford 150km
- c 12 July - rest/action in Oxford (we have a local organiser)
- c 13-15 July - Oxford-Bristol (maybe via Newbury) 110km or 150km
- c 16 July - rest/action in Bristol (we have a local organiser)
- c 17-19 July - Bristol - Portsmouth(150km)/Weymouth(110km)/Poole(110km)
- c 20 July - Cross the channel on a ferry
- 22nd July - 1st August Camp Action Climat (french climate camp [1]) near Le Havre, France.
- Calais no borders camp OR Lille
- 14th August - Oostende, Belgium. Climate event: film making, political panel discussions and arts.
- cycling through the netherlands, briefly
- 21st-29th August [http:/www.klimacamp2010.de/ Klima Camp], Erklenz, Germany
- Maybe finish by riding to Cologne OR to a nicer more natural place a few days ride away (after having just done some direct action against coal
The list: 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.
Here is a list of activist events on or near the general route(s) we are talking about, between June & August. List items in bold are the ones we think we will be able to go to. Add anything else that you hear about. The list can also be seen on an open edit google map at http://bit.ly/ceNwc6
- 21 May - 5 June, Solidarity bikeride making links between communities resisting fossil-fuel extraction, from Merthyr, Wales to Rossport, Ireland. [2] --> Maybe this could even link up with the ecotopia biketour ?!?!?!?!
- 12th June Naked bikeride, London, England [3]
- 19th June Naked Bikeride, Brussels, Belgium (to be confirmed)
- June (exact dates tbc) - UK National Climate Camp Gathering, probably in Leeds
- 21-25 June - Interference art/activism event being organised by Mark, London, England
- 23rd June - 24th August: Baltic Sea Info Tour, Nuclear Heritage [4] to raise awareness aginast radioactive polution of the baltic sea
- 25th June Critical Mass, London, England
- 26-27 June - Exmouth Exodus - SW England equivalent of Dunwich Dynamo (see below) [5]
- 28 June - 1 July Towards Carfree Cities Conference IX - York, England
- 2nd July - 28th Aug Otesha project starts cycling, Lands End, Cornwall, England
- 2-7 July - Tour de Elbe, international CZ-D ride from Decin /CZ/ to Magdeburg /D/ to promote Elberadweg
- 3-4 July - EuroVeloGex [6] followed by a 3-days cycling 5-7th July.
- 4-5 July - bikes not cars festival Amsterdam www.bikesnotcars.wordpress.com
- 1-4 July 2010 "Velorution Universelle" a big critical mass in Paris, France [7]
- 3 July - 15 August "AlterTour" tour-de-france for a non-doped planet, France [8]
- 1-6 july 2010 YOUPEC Geel, Antwerp, Belgium
- 8-11 July FOIBOS greenways conference, Budapest, Hungary
- 22nd July - 1st August Camp Action Climat (french climate camp [9]) near Le Havre, France.
- 23-25 July The Big Tent, Falkland, Fife, Scotland
- 25 July - 7 August - Tour de Natur (cycling tour middle of germany) www.tourdenatur.net
- 23-27 July Peace News Summer Camp, Oxfordshire, England [10]
- 24-25 July Dunwich Dynamo, London-Suffolk (east coast), England - 190km overnight bike ride, not really an activist event, but one of the biggest mass participation, not-sport, bike events in the UK [11]
- 25. july - 01. aug. Sieben Linden Sommercamp 2010
- 29th July - 4 Aug - Belgium Climate Camp, location unknown yet [12]
- 30th July Critical Mass, London (& Brighton England)
- 1-21st August Ecotopia, Flaeming, Germany [13]
- 4-9 August – Earth First! Summer Camp, Derbyshire, UK [14]
- 14th August - Oostende, Belgium. Climate event: film making, political panel discussions and arts.
- 21st-29th August Klima Camp, Erklenz, Germany [http:/www.klimacamp2010.de]
- 30. August - Pedal Power Day at Freestate Swomp Amsterdam http://swomp.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/pedal-power-dag-zondag-30-augustus/#more-920
- 27th september - 5th of october No borders camp, brussels. Probably interesting for people who want to travel on after BT.
- ongoing: Rossport Shell to Sea solidarity camp, Ireland [15]
- ongoing: (right now, at least!) Mainshill Solidarity Camp, southern scotland [16]
- ongoing: http://www.lappersfort.tk/ a occupied forest in Belguim, people are resisting against the destruction of the forest - worth a visit
- ongoing: Major environmental in countries like Ukraine !
Dates not set yet:
- YFoEE Summer Camp, probably early August, Poland
- Reclaim the Fields [17] maybe Hungary, maybe Germany or Poland (near the border)..
- Peasant's activist camp in Brittany, France
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:
- We need 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 coordinate the Biketour in Belgium, Netherlands and Germany? These are small roles, as the routes will be small in these countries!
- 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.
Other Route Ideas
here is a list of the other ideas we had on the Route 2010. if u want to give one of them energy (for next year maybe!), or have other crazy ideas for 2011, please do so on the bt-org list or write to info[at]ecotopiabiketour.net
Proposal by Laura, partly based on Felt the heat!. Daniël added distances.
- Eupatoria to Ecotopia (Black Sea, Ukraine to Chernobyl to the Ecotopia (1 - 21 Augus) in Germany)
- minimal 2200 km (Sebastopol-Flaeming)
- 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)
- 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
- 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.
- 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...
- Zürich-Barcelona is 1050 km
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.
For England route, see the bikeroute plan.