Photo: Telebruxelles

In 2012, Christmas tree supplier L’Arbre de Leon challenged their bicycle delivery company Dioxyde de Gambettes to bring trees from Libin to Bruxelles. One year later, on November 29 the first ever trans-Wallonian Christmas tree bicycle caravan pedaled 200km with 100 Christmas trees, arriving in Bruxelles to kick-start the holiday season.

Christmas tree seller L’Arbre de Leon uses the bicycle delivery company Dioxyde de Gambettes to deliver trees within the city by bike. At one point they asked themselves – why not deliver the trees by bicycle directly from the supplier?

And so a challenge was born. This year, they decided to rise to the challenge of actually picking up the trees from their supplier  and delivering it to the city – a 200km journey. Meeting in the early morning at the Christmas tree supplier in Libin, the caravan loaded up 450 kilos of small Christmas trees. The group consisted of 15 enthusiastic cyclists and included 3 tandem bicycles with trailers for pulling the load. Having done a practice run in the summer, the organizers realized they needed to have extra people bicycling alongside them to share the load of the tandems. Those on the bicycles followed along, swapping places with those on the tandems to share the burden of the good transport.

The goals of this challenge were to have a fun calorie-depleting adventure (what better way to earn those holiday treats?), illustrate what our daily (or in this case, seasonal) purchases imply in terms of transportation and logistics and to demonstrate how bicycles can be a solution for goods transport  – even for large volumes over long distances.

The successful arrival of the caravan to Place Brugmann in Brussels on December 1 was celebrated in style. Not only do these adventurers show us that there is no feat too big for a bicycle, they make us think about all the future challenges we can think of for them for next year...

Watch the video on tvlux.be

About the Author

Zoé Kruchten is a Communications Assistant at the European Cyclists’ Federation. She has a BA in International Relations and has worked in the past as a bike mechanic.