Going Bare!

  Going Bare!

  John Harding

  Copyright 2012 by John Harding

  Kindle Edition

  Credits and License

  Copyright © John Harding 2012

  John Harding has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  This piece of work is fiction and is released under the Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0), the full text of which can be obtained from the Creative Commons website. The work may be freely distributed unmodified and with these credits attached. The story may not be reproduced for commercial purposes, or for profit, without explicit permission from the author.

  I offer my sincere thanks to Turbo, my proof-reader, and to all the members on the British Naturism forum who helped correct the considerable number of errors in the draft text. My special thanks go to Col, Emma, Davey, Nick, Pat, Duncan and Hantsnat.

  Please note that this book is written in British English.

  The front cover for this book is by Dirk De Keyser and was purchased through 123RF at http://www.123rf.com/photo_14912162_warning-sign-naturist-resort-in-south-of-france.html

  Chapter I: Introduction

  There is nothing extraordinary about me or my family. My wife – known in this book as E – and I met at University when I was studying for my Computer Science degree. We are both thirty and have two children, a boy who is nearly eight and a girl who is four. We live in a small town in North West England, both working full-time, and have two cars and a mortgage: in essence, quite unspectacular. There are many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of families throughout the UK who are comparable to us.

  This book details our first taste of naturism as a family, when in August 2012 we packed our suitcases and travelled to France to stay for four days at the naturist resort of La Jenny, not far from Bordeaux. Naturism is something I have always wanted to do – and I talk a bit about this in the book – and something that my wife was quite reluctant to do, at least initially. We both grew up in conservative households and while we had both shed some of our “programming” and are reasonably liberal in our views now, I was far keener to ditch my clothes and run around naked than my wife.

  I have tried to keep this book light to read, and fairly short. These are our experiences as perceived and recollected by me, they do not represent the thoughts of anyone other than myself and are told as candidly as possible. A large proportion of this book was written at La Jenny or shortly afterwards to ensure some degree of accuracy.

  I hope that you get some enjoyment out of it and please let me know what you think. If you are a member of British Naturism then drop me a message to “john1981” on the forums.

  Chapter II: The Appeal of Naturism

  I cannot define any point of my life where I can say that it was then that the naturist beliefs first appealed to me. When I was younger, I had always liked to be without my clothes, especially when on my own and used to get sent to bed by my parents dressed in pyjamas. I would take great delight in removing the stripy clothing the moment my bedroom door closed and would climb into bed feeling the naked cotton sheets close to my skin. First, I remember removing my top and sleeping “topless” but as I got braver I would always like to sleep with nothing on, especially during the warmer months. It felt liberating and ever so slightly naughty. Even walking around my room unclothed felt more natural but I never understood why.

  When I was nine or ten, I remember going to PGL – a week-long summer camp for kids from seven to sixteen – to engage in various activities and sleeping in a dormitory with around a dozen kids of a similar age. It was inevitable that we wouldn't go to sleep at the set bedtime and I remember a challenge being set to run around the dorm naked in the dark, illuminated by the weak light from the underpowered torches. Most of my peers completed it topless to howls of derision but I was one of two that did complete it every night and we even ventured outside the dormitory later in the week; it was a thrill. We were even dared to visit “the girls” but never did. I am not sure what they would have made of it!

  I remember everyone being secretive in the shared showers or getting dressed under the duvet covers but it never worried me. I was fairly shy as a child and didn't just talk to new people easily, but I had no trouble being naked in their presence. After all, I didn't have anything different from anyone else, and why would they want to look at me when they had exactly the same anatomy?

  In short, as I grew up I liked the idea of freedom of without clothes but had no idea where this came from as it was out of kilter from what I was being told – both in the playground, at home and at school. The showers at school were universally hated by everyone although I preferred to be clean instead of sweaty and being naked for a few moments never bothered me, unlike my peers.

  I remember our PSE teacher railing about Page 3 in The Sun as being “soft-porn” and claiming therefore that it should be banned, and while I could have found an entire school of teenage boys who disagreed with her on this point, it would not be for the idea of promoting naturist ideals. One of my peers in class got a detention for having a magazine in school full of images of naked women; by today’s pornography-laden society, the pictures were tame, and while graphic were not sexually explicit. I think the teacher was imposing their beliefs of morality onto us, but at school the links were always being reinforced that topless – or even naked – people were objectionable. Personally, I did not agree with the concept of nudity equating to pornography, but then I disagreed with the opinions of most of my teachers, not least on the subject of homework!

  My trips abroad were not plentiful. My parents were not overly rich and our holidays remained primarily within the UK. I therefore had no opportunity to experience the more relaxed attitude of other cultures around nudity. To me, it was my out of kilter hormones or anything other than it being an acceptable way of life, and I would grow out of it. Even the drunken strip poker that I played as a teenager almost served to reinforce this: stripping was to be “won” (or “lost”) and nothing else; normality, around other people, was to be clothed.

  The most naked I would ever get in public was in the summers in the mid-1990s. My friend and I would go on “bike rides” - often wearing just cycling shorts and trainers and we would cycle for tens of miles through the countryside. I would love the wind whistling past my bare chest (pre-chest hair!) and never quite understood the odd admiring glance we would get from girls walking their dogs across Cholesbury Common. It was shortly after I stopped cycling and took up beer that my frame went from tall and muscular to tall and stocky, so I probably wouldn't get the same glances now, but there was a thrill of riding through the Chiltern Hills half-naked!

  If it wasn't for the Internet, or at least the Internet in the privacy of my bedroom when I was sixteen, I guess I wouldn't have really stumbled across the naturism/nudism lifestyle. I wouldn't say it consumed a lot of my time, as that would be misleading, but I certainly read a lot about it. Strange as it may seem, the attraction of seeing naked girls, even in my most hormone-obsessed state was never really there – at least not as a primary motivation – but the thought of going bare and free through the woods or on the beach seemed incredibly liberating and powerful.

  Every single story or picture on the 'net always had the subjects beaming wide toothy smiles and it was clear that they were enjoying themselves. I have always thought that the most beautiful part of a person is their smile; at its most genuine it’s intoxicating and infectious and a group of people smiling and enjoying themselves will always cause the viewer or reader to smile as well.

  However most of all, naturism looked daring, adventurous and unfettered by daily struggl
es. I even read the account and saw the pictures of a naturist wedding and my mind was made up that at some point (when I had money and time) I would want to try naturism to see if my Ruritanian and idealistic notion of what I thought it would be like, would meet reality.

  By the time I was in my third year at University, I had come no closer to achieving my ambition. I had not lost interest but other, more important items had leapt to the top of my “to-do” list and I had my first, proper girlfriend in E. Within nine months of starting to date I was engaged to be married and within a further nine we were expecting our first child.

  E was always very body conscious and aware of her appearance. I have never had anything like a six-pack or a ten-inch cock and learnt to accept what life brought. I try to keep my weight down so that I am merely stocky but E always had far more negative opinions about her body than she should have had. The thought of walking out naked in public would have scared her.

  Of course I found E sexy, I have always loved to see her naked body and cuddle up to it but I know she didn't see it. At the time, she was fairly conservative, never wanting to kiss in public and always making sure she was properly attired. A cuddle in public could never involve my hands wandering, for example, no matter if there was no-one around to see it. In public, she had to remain “decent.”

  A naturist lifestyle seemed even further away than ever and I would probably have said at the time it was a pipedream; like a six year old being an astronaut or winning the lottery. It wasn't going to happen and I began to see it as a nice concept that other people got to experience, but not me.

  It was a trip to the Lake District to celebrate our wedding anniversary that started the thought processes again. Our room in a lovely little hotel on the banks of the beautiful Lake Ambleside was boiling hot; we were right over the kitchens and it was just unbearable. E and I both slept naked but I opened the full length French doors completely and strode out onto a small patio area that was accessible only from our room.

  I tried to entice E onto the patio and looked out into the trees; it was night-time and the light of the moon was the only illumination but I couldn't manage it. Instead, as naked as the day I was born, I sat on the grass and felt the cool air around me. It may have been October but it was a beautiful clear night and in total contrast from the hot airless room. It was refreshing.

  I could have lain in the grass all night and it was, I suppose, my first real taste of naturism. I loved it, but was called back into the airless sweatbox by E; the thought had definitely been reawakened.

  My wife gave birth to a little girl in 2008 to complement the little boy we had conceived while we were at University in 2004 so money became tighter again. We were paying hundreds of pounds a month on childcare and while life was not hard, we didn't have an excess of money to spend on family trips abroad.

  I mentioned naturism to E a few times but she dismissed it and while Little Miss and Little Master are certainly exhibitionists – they have stripped off in the garden before (and at other people's gardens) and neither of them think much of wandering around the house naked – E was far less so. She would wander around our bedroom at home with nothing on but that was it. If we were to go on holiday it had to be for everyone, and not just for me.

  In the mean time I also read an erotic series called “Summer Camp” by Nick Scipio that was set in the 1970s at a nudist camp and although the family were also swingers, it was the care-free and relaxed attitudes of “The Pines” that I began to long for. It was tempting and I wanted to try it. Of course I know it would be different to what was written in a semi-fictional book, but it still flamed a long-held desire and I began to suggest to my wife that it was a lifestyle worth trying.

  This would prove far harder, as naturists don't always get a great press.

  Chapter III: An exceedingly brief summary of naturism as I discussed with my wife

  Naturists can probably skip this chapter, but for the non-naked amongst us, here is a very brief introduction to the world I wanted to introduce my family (and me) to.

  I have used the term naturist in this book as I prefer it, although naturism and nudism are terms used interchangeably, but as I discovered some people and groups argue they are different and others do not. In essence, the general gist was the same: naturists and nudists like being naked on their own or in groups, doing whatever they would be doing that day without clothing where possible.

  That is not to say that everything has to be done naked; I for one, would not fancy cooking a barbecue without the protection of an apron and I can imagine certain sports requiring a modicum of protection, but the act of walking, swimming, sunbathing, playing games, etc without clothes is certainly naturist.

  Naturism, and social nudity throughout the ages is nothing new:

  In Greece, athletes and festival-goers regularly attended their gatherings with nothing on until the Christians – offended by the parallels to homosexuality and paganism – outlawed it. Many tribes from Scotland, North America, the Pacific and the Amazon lived or went into battle naked and bathing – on the beaches and in public bathhouses was done au-naturel (until the Victorians invented the swimming costume.)

  Although the British television deliberately didn't report on it, the Duchess of Cambridge aka Kate Middleton, had an interesting visit to the Solomon Islands where she was greeted by bare-breasted dancers, and received a garland from a topless tribeswoman, days after half-naked photographs of her were printed in a French magazine.

  There is a well-known English story of Lady Godiva; she was the wife of a noble who imposed repressive taxes on his subjects and when challenged on this by his wife told her that he would not relent unless she rode naked through the streets of Coventry. She did this, and a boy called Tom watched her and was struck blind (hence the phrase 'Peeping Tom').

  By the time the post-war enlightment had come along, the concept of social nudity and clothing-optional events were getting more popular. The Nambassa music festival in New Zealand in the late-1970s tolerated nudity as did Woodstock; could you imagine Glastonbury now without clothes?!

  As society became more liberal, nudism and naturism started becoming more popular and more accepted. Today naturists have their own social network – Skinbook – as well as monthly magazines, political parties, London nightclubs, holiday resorts, towns and shops.

  Despite all this popularity though, it is probably fair to say that naturists have never really got a great press in the UK; the ruling and publishing elite are too judgemental on things they don't understand and we are too prudish as a nation to fully embrace it. We view the naked, shared saunas of the Scandinavians or the beaches in mainland Europe with a degree of scepticism while retaining some comfort with the “stiff upper lip” mentality of the traditional British gent.

  The idea of people wanting to be naked, and there being no sexual element to it, was something that not everyone could grasp. Indeed, the well-known and notorious series made by Bullseye Television for an erotic channel, The Wonderful World of Sex, had articles on naked sunbathing in Munich, naturist camping, naturist holiday camps and Spencer Tunnick. If an “educational” programme, albeit one to titillate, cannot distinguish between nudity and sex then is there much hope for those they are seeking to educate?

  It was somewhat ironic that the naturist holiday camp they featured in the South of France was La Jenny, which is where my family and I ended up. I am not just picking on The Wonderful World of Sex as when any time a late night TV programme wants to be “salacious” they rock up at a naturist beach with a derisive smirk and a voiceover in a silly accent. However, it's somewhat disconcerting when I would want to convince my wife to join me on a naturist holiday that I would have to fight not only her beliefs, but those prejudices of the populist media.

  Even the Internet newsgroups have a group entitled alt.sex.nudism and Yahoo lists the naturist groups under their “adult” section. Microsoft censor the word “naturist” in their search, and their policies for their cl
oud storage prohibit naturist photos being stored on their service under the same clause that prevents pornography being stashed on their servers. It is not just television that cannot distinguish between nudity and eroticism; it is huge swathes of our society.

  It has been well documented that throughout the world, people and clubs have lost business arrangements, access to local facilities, access to payment processing (and therefore funds), access to their children, or even liberty for their naturist ideals and these stories act as a frightener to those wishing to adopt or try the lifestyle.

  In the UK there are two well-known naturists. The first being, Billy Connolly, the famous and profanity-laden comedian. His naturism has seen him on television doing naked bungee jumps or running into the sea and attracting millions watching with understanding smiles on their faces. It fits in with his cheeky and outlandish persona.

  The other is Stephen Gough, the ex-Royal marine known as the Naked Rambler. In 2004 and 2006 he completed a walk from Lands End to John O' Groats wearing just boots, socks, a rucksack and a hat, being arrested on the trips but always released shortly afterwards. He was arrested after a flight in 2006 when he didn't get dressed and was given a seven-month jail term, which was increased to ten when he appeared in court au-naturel. Stephen Gough spent most of the next six years in and out of prison, for wanting to walk around the countryside with nothing on. He was released in July 2012, only to be re-arrested three days later, just weeks before the start of the London 2012.

  In the original Greek Olympic Games, the forerunner to our modern sporting spectacle, the athletes competed with nothing on. Did anyone else notice the hypocritical parallelism? Indeed, swimsuits slow down the athlete; I wonder how fast Becky Adlington would be without her clothes on?

  So, the point of these little ramblings is to highlight to you, as I did to my wife, that going without clothes was not a “new” phenomenon and it was something that had been practised by scores of people throughout history. It is just modern-day “morals” that has equated nudity with sex but this was short-sighted and wrong. Naturism was pure and innocent.