2015 – Page 5 – Ecotopia Biketour

Cycling to Oslo

Candid December 16, 2015 December 16, 2015

After Kampetorp, the Biketour took three days to cycle to Oslo. Entering Norway, things were as different as you could possibly imagine. The part of Sweden that we had previously cycled in was full of forest, with not many people or cars around, and people seemed to live in some kind of unrealistic idyllic dream, where no matter what happens, everyone will always be friendly to each other. Norway seemed to be the opposite – suddenly the roads were so packed of (new and shiny) cars that cycling got much slower, there were people everywhere, one supermarket after each other,…

Biketour in Kampetorp

Candid December 12, 2015 April 10, 2016

At the end of July, the Biketour stayed for two days at Kampetorp, an eco-village in Sweden really close to the southern border of Norway. Getting there was a nightmare – steep gravel roads at about 10°C and heavy rain. But when we arrived we were welcomed to stay in a cosy little red house heated by a fire stove. Kampetorp is a clearing in the middle of the forest where a group of (about 10?) young people have started to live in a communal and sustainable way. People live mostly as families in their own houses, and there is not…

Wildcamping in Sweden – with hot showers and a sauna

Candid December 8, 2015 December 8, 2015

On the way from Broddetorp to Loo Östang, the scouts had difficulties finding a good sleeping spot. In the end they chose a lawn next to a football pitch just outside a village. No one was around to ask whether it’s a good idea to camp there, and our Biketour experience tells us that wild-camping really close to a village without asking for permission is normally not a very good idea, and football pitches in particular are not the kind of places the most open to strangers, so we were already expecting that we would be told to leave the…

Biketour in Broddetorp

Candid December 4, 2015 December 2, 2015

Broddetorp is a small village of about 140 inhabitants somewhere between Vättern and Vänern, the two big lakes of Sweden. The Biketour spent the night from the 22nd to the 23rd of July there. Broddetorp got our attention when we were looking for anti-mining groups in the area (there is a lot of uranium and rare earth mining projects going on in that region). We found a group called Nej till Uranbrytning and got in contact with their member Birgitta. A coincidence for such a small village, it turned out that a former participant of the Biketour also lives there. Birgitta was very…