Can Masdeu, our starting point
The biketour is just around the corner, starting one month from now! Phew how time has flown away, but loads of things have happened during our preparations…
We have made many many contacts, via internet, friends and travel, our route has almost finished taking shape (although there will still be major changes!) and the word is being spread (any help is welcome). Now it’s the time to confirm all the places we will visit, and work on detailed maps of the route.
Along our route in Catalonia we will visit some really inspiring self-managed agro-living projects, in France we will meet up with bicycle-freaks and will travel through beautiful scenery near the sea and inland, help to build a strawbale house, and cross the Alps into Val Di Susa, to meet the people and the struggle against the TGV…to cross Italy will be easy, mostly flat and following the po river, Andrea will take us to some nice projects on the last week.
João fixing the roof of the communal tree house in the big forest, Z.A.D
Last month Alice took a boat to the UK to join a friend’s wedding celebrations in Edinburgh, bikes were never far away with a colourful bike procession leading the festivities. After speaking to as many people about the biketour as possible she visited the 56a infoshop/bike workshop in London to bring one of our trailers back to Barcelona to use on the tour.
João went to the Z.A.D, France, was spreading information on the biketour and building the roof of the forest communal tree-house, meeting yolanda and other friends and getting to know more about this struggle against the construction of the first “green” airport in the world (and the biggest in europe).
This week João is trying to finish his new crazy travelling-partner, a beautiful tall-bike that will ride part of the tour, unfortunately it will probably not be good for the bigger mountains, but perhaps he will accept the challenge of cycling over the Alps, surely that would be one of the world’s first !
Getting the tall-bike ready to weld
In other mad bike mechanic news, we may joined by the musical ‘Serious Bean Project‘, a band from Maastricht, for a few weeks in France. In order to do this we must figure out how to cycle with a range of instruments, including a double bass. Amazingly a friend of the biketour, Austin, is rising to the challenge and the construction of a big musical trailer has begun!
Next stop will most probably be Grenoble’s cyclo-camp – a meeting of cyclo-freaks, bike-punks and fixie-hippsters to share knowledge and build insane pedal-powered projects :)
Keep in touch, get involved and hope to see you in summer.
DON’T FORGET TO REGISTER – it will make us happy and makes organisation a hell of a lot easier!