Bike travel enthusiasts all know Warmshowers. But the mainstream site of the bicycle traveler is not the only platform bringing together the supply and free accommodation demand between individuals. What if the inhabitant’s campsite became the standard for your bicycle getaway? We are now interested in the Belgian initiative Welcome to My Garden. If it also offers a 100% Slow Travel approach, the host potential tank is much more important.
Welcome to My Garden, another covid baby
As often, the idea of the project was born at the time of the COVVIA health crisis. At the end of a Brussels – Tokyo by bicycle, Manon Brulard and Dries Van Ransbeeck journey from day to the day after the day of the world.
Dries has the idea of opening his garden so that Belgian bicycle travelers can plant their tent for free for one night.
He creates a very simple card, which he shares on a group of hikers on Facebook. Enthusiasm is instantaneous: a pair of hours is enough for 50 gardens to be added. In two weeks, 500 gardens are offering the softness of their lawn to the passing cyclist!
Five years later, the WTMG community has 7,290 gardens and more than 3,000 travelers registered, including a good thousand in France. As comparisons, Warmshowers communicates on a community of more than 190,000 members identified in 2023 around the world, with a seniority that is not comparable either since the American platform was born in 1993.
Homestant campsite: WTMG, a site open to all meeting lovers
The WTMG team is based in Jette, in the suburbs of Brussels. Welcome to My Garden wants to be less cyclo-centered than Warmshowers. There is no need to be a cyclist to offer your garden. Better still, many hosts are only attracted by meetings. “” On Welcome to My Garden, lots of hosts have never traveled by bike or on foot “, Explains Manon.
“The fact that everything goes out of the house makes the operation more flexible for the host”
« The fact that everything goes out of the house makes the operation more flexible for the host ”she adds. “” There is no bed to prepare, it is not even necessarily essential to be there. The host places the level of intimacy where he wants. We can discuss if we wish. It’s less heavy for the host to welcome, but also for the traveler to be welcomed like that. »
Hiking fans or cycling journeys constitute the heart of target of WTMG for the campsite at the locals. But any practitioner of slow travel can find his account there: ” We had hikers with donkeys, and even people who travel in kayak, or rollerblad Smiles Manon on the phone.
We go a soft bike with the slow travel
The slow travelit is this approach to the trip that favors quality (understand experience and ecological assessment) on quantity (the distance traveled, the distance from the home, etc.). The meetings are at the heart of this approach, since unlike a motorized road trip, each kilometer counts, especially when approaching the end of the day.
In the principle of the inhabitant’s campsite, it is necessary to go to the foreths of the vintage to obtain the agreement to put your tent, in particular in the countries where the bivouac is prohibited (England, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, etc.).
-WTMG wants to be part of this logic and facilitate travel by creating a link between hosts and travelers. If accommodation is offered free of charge by hosts, registration on the site is paying, at least for travelers.
Membership, compulsory to run the Welcome to My Garden machine
« Basic, Welcome to My Garden was a citizen project Remember Manon. “” The development was regular, and at some point, we found ourselves working full time. We felt responsibility for the hosts and travelers who wanted the site to continue to exist. For that, we had to find a model that was viable. »
It is therefore at the request of the community that the membership system is set up. This modest contribution of € 36 (at a time when these lines are written) is very quickly. From experience, this amount roughly corresponds to a location for two campsite nights, or even only one in a three or four -star, standard campsite which becomes the norm in the somewhat tourist areas.
However, Welcome to My Garden belongs to the family of social enterprises, the Belgian equivalent of our ESS, the social and solidarity economy. It is characterized, among other things, by the public service it brings to the community, as well as by a profit above all reinvested in the development of the activity.
If you believe the WTMG website, you will never find advertising. And expansion, both statistical and geographic, is only ensured by the users themselves.
A fairly staggering potential of falling points
At Weelz!, We find the idea of encouraging generous individuals, cycle tourists or not, to open a small end of their super interesting property. Imagine if, if only one percent of French owners of houses with garden, undertook to put to request a place for cyclists in a mop. It would make hundreds of thousands of falling points!
“The garden is the natural extension of a conception of life.”Erik Orsenna
Cutting the road on the handlebars would gain ease and safety, especially for those that the wild camping worries. There is no doubt that this favorable context would create vocations of bicycle travelers.
To date, Welcome to My Garden has a large majority of registered in Western Europe. With, in all, a solid home in Belgium. The future will tell us if the project will extend around the world.
Want to plant your tent in a corner of greenery or offer your garden? To register, it’s here. Tell us in comment what you think of the initiative.
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