2005.03.05 The Guardian

Cap d'Agde, midway between the Pyrenees and the Camargue, is the place to go for nude bathing. Just say the name slowly and you can practically smell the suncream. Mildenhall, on the other hand, has different associations. Midway between Thetford and Newmarket, and a good 90 minutes from the nearest beach, Mildenhall is home to the Fen Tigers speedway team and boasts the biggest USAF in-flight refuelling facility in Europe. If you say the name slowly, you will smell not suncream, but mud and petrol. And if you visit the town centre on a Saturday night, you really should keep your clothes on.

Unless, of course, it is the last Saturday in the month and you find yourself here, in the municipal swimming baths. Then, for two hours only, you may float or crawl, bob about and play ball, or simply tread water and chat, wearing nothing but a wristwatch and secure in the knowledge that the only people who can see you are themselves naked.

Well, almost. The glass door that leads from the entrance lobby has been blanked out with foil, and a pair of life rafts are propped in front of the end window, protecting us from prying eyes. But public baths must have lifeguards, and there they stand, to my dismay, two lads wearing shorts and jerseys.

Not that anyone else seems bothered. There are 30 or more bathers here, thick-skinned naturists for whom the presence of two clothed lifeguards barely registers on the annoyance scale. It's the other naturists they want to see. For this, above all, is a social club, whose members think nothing of driving for several hours to meet up. At the shallow end, half a dozen children splash around with a ball while their parents catch up on news and gossip. "Didn't see you at Bedford last week. We had 120. Is anyone going to Letchworth? Should be a good one ..."

In the sauna, men talk politics. The Central Council for British Naturism, now in its 40th year, is holding elections, and someone is electioneering. "Isn't it time for a shake-up? Have you seen the state of the website? Where were the CCBN when the media were full of Steve Gough, hiking naked from Lands End to John O'Groats? Too busy playing politics ..."

Back at the poolside, someone is selling naturist books and magazines from a folding table. There are videos called Barely Balearic and Carefreely Corfu, and here I find Malcolm Boura. The man behind these naturist swims is a tall, bearded teacher. As the new press officer for the CCBN's eastern region, he is optimistic about his preferred lifestyle.

When the government began framing its Sexual Offences Bill, he says, naturists feared the new legislation might criminalise their activities. "So a group of us decided to make a submission, and we realised that nobody even knew how many naturists there were."

In 2001, they paid for questions on naturism to be included in a national opinion poll, and the results came as a pleasant surprise. "We were fairly sure that people's opinions would be more favourable than the typical councillor would have us believe when we try to hire a swimming pool," says Boura, "but they actually came out very good indeed." While only 2% of UK adults described themselves as naturist, 24% had swum naked, 40% reckoned nude sunbathing or swimming was sensible and 82% were happy with nudist beaches. "When asked to choose between different words to describe naturists, 88% chose 'harmless'." says Boura. "Which is pretty encouraging."

There's nothing like two hours treading water to sharpen the appetite. So, showered and dressed, we re-enter what naturists refer to as the "textile" world to buy fish and chips before heading back to Boura's place. And then someone begins undressing. I instantly recognise Richard Collins from the sauna. A software engineer who recently gave up his day job to spend more time promoting naturism, he is tall, good-looking and has what the personal ads call a GSOH. He's also, says our host, "one of the top militant naturists in the country". Which explains why, alone among the assembled nudists, he is now naked. Or does it?

"I wouldn't describe myself as militant," he says. "I'm just prepared to push the boundaries." Recently, pushing the boundaries has involved regular nude cycle rides through Cambridge. This has made Collins a local celebrity, which in turn has put his marriage under strain. It has also brought the police to his door.

The most anyone can say about the law and nudity is that it is a grey area. If people complain to the police, says Boura, it is often because they feel they ought to. But most police officers simply don't want to know.

Collins remembers his first visit from the local community officer. "He could see through to the kitchen to where I was washing up in the nude. I went out to speak to him and said, 'Do you mind if I don't put anything on?' and he said, 'No.' He asked, 'Have you been out cycling this afternoon, sir?' So I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'What, like that?' and I said, 'Yes.' And he said, 'Hmm. I can trace your route from the calls we've had.' But because I'm not confrontational and always make it clear that I'm not out to offend, they let me carry on. I have stopped and spoken to the police while I've been nude on my bike, and they have let me cycle into the sunset without a stitch on.

"Why do I do it? I just feel more comfortable relaxing without clothes. I only do it when it's warm enough - it's a bit ecologically unfriendly to run the heating all year round, and your hands can get awfully cold sitting at a computer - but once you take off that last bit of clothing, it's an all-over feeling. I'm actually naked now because it's a social occasion, it's warm enough, and if I wasn't naked I'd be sitting here wishing I was."

Collins represents the assertive end of the naturist continuum, but he clearly speaks for everyone in the room when he describes the sense of freedom in discarding that last item of clothing. There are all sorts here: a science teacher, a meat packer, a builder, two farmers, a lorry driver, a care worker ... These days, Suzanne Piper edits the magazine Naturist Life and runs a naturist club. But during the hot summer of 1976 she was working as a psychiatric nurse on the south coast and had no experience of naturism. Then she heard about a nearby nudist beach.

"I was fascinated. I like to know why people do things, and often the only way to find out is to try it for yourself. So I found the beach and got my kit off and it was so much more comfortable. When people ask what it feels like, I always draw an analogy with being a nurse. You're wearing a uniform and being professional, and although you have feelings, you must not show them. But at home, you can take off your clothes, have a shower, a glass of wine and relax. Which is why naturism attracts people in that sort of job. For instance, we have a lot of police officers."

Like many naturist women, Suzanne emphasises her fondness for dressing up. "I will go to a dinner-dance and wear an elegant gown - I love that. It's not that I reject clothes. But to me, naturism is the freedom to be nude when I'm comfortable being nude."

The only fly in the suncream, of course, is that many textiles still get agitated when confronted with the human body. For although there is arguably a greater acreage of flesh visible in the west today, on our screens and our beaches, in our clubs and our magazines, than in previous times, the reasons for its display are invariably sexual, whether directly, as in pornography, or indirectly, as in Wimbledon. Which is why nude bathers, despite being "harmless" through and through, must screen swimming pool windows and hide themselves away at the rocky end of the beach. All of which is a constant source of puzzlement and irritation to naturists.

From the far end of the table, someone points out that naturists tend to be open, friendly, well-adjusted people, in contrast to many uptight textiles. "My wife and I made so many friends when we started going to naturist swims," he says. "We got 200 cards one Christmas. You wouldn't get 10 words out of anyone at a textile session, yet the public think we're the funny ones."

Encouraged by the opinion poll, Boura is convinced that few people genuinely find nudity offensive. "What you find an awful lot of the time," he says, "is that it's not the person complaining who is offended. They complain because they think somebody else will be - their children, or some little old lady down the road." Collins chips in that he has "quite a fan club of little old ladies in Cambridge", and someone else suggests that the children of naturists are less likely to have unwanted teen pregnancies.

"You've got these strict religious groups telling children that bits of their body aren't nice and have to be kept covered, and they're the children who grow up with sexual disorders," says Piper. And then the conversation turns to the Book of Genesis and the sequence of events that led to Adam and Eve becoming the very first textiles.

Collins has just taken part in a radio debate with a Baptist minister in a small Cambridgeshire town who is outraged that a bunch of naturists should have been watching films at the local picture house, wearing only the clothes that the Lord gave them. He shows me a leaflet called Cinema In The Buff, and I make a note to ring the organisers, a couple called Mark and Tina Yates. "You'll have to ring their mobile," Boura warns me. "They live on a canal boat."

For many naturists, bathing is only part of the story. Nudity is a way of living, which means that what can be done with clothes on can also be done with clothes off, within the bounds of safety and comfort. Boura finds nudity preferable for hot, dusty DIY, but draws the line at anything involving paint. "You always end up attacking yourself with noxious chemicals to get it off," he says. He also has reservations about angle grinders, after hearing how the sparks set fire to one man's pubic hair. Going to the cinema, on the other hand, presents no such difficulties. "Just bring a towel," Mark Yates tells me when I phone him. "And a smile."

The towel turns out to be for use as a seat cover, although whether for my comfort or the safety of future patrons I cannot be sure. Not that the Grand in Ramsey looks to have much of a future. Built in 1935 to seat 1,000, it now doubles as a music and dance venue, and faces closure unless it can comply with noise regulations. Manager Peter Haddon needs £30,000 to keep the old place open and is glad of any customers, clothed or otherwise.

It's a sunny afternoon when I arrive, but up the stairs and in the back bar you would not know it. The carpet is old and red, and in the gloom I am now more disconcerted by the odd patch of chewing gum than by the inevitable presence of two fully-clad barmen (it's illegal to serve drinks naked, I am told).

Scanning the two dozen or so people in the room, I spot familiar faces from Mildenhall. I also note that everyone else has their shoes on. Relieved, I fetch mine, but then discover I've left my towel behind. Sitting on a folded T-shirt, it occurs to me that I could simply keep my underpants on. But that would defeat the object of the exercise - whatever that might be.

To keep such negativity at bay, I ask if anyone knows what the film is. Starsky & Hutch, says a fellow from Grimsby, and I am about to ask why he would drive 100 miles to watch a Hollywood remake of a TV series in the nude when I stop myself. It is, I guess, a social thing. And it's true that everyone here is incredibly friendly. The man who had 200 Christmas cards greets me like an old friend, and before long I am sipping lager and discussing the exact model of car driven by David Soul in the original series. A man with a ponytail wanders over. "I'm pretty sure it was a Ford Gran Torino," he volunteers. And then Yates invites us to take our seats.

The film turns out to be The Station Agent, which is so different from Starsky & Hutch as to confirm my view that it is the context rather than the content that is important here. Or is it? Ten minutes into this bizarre drama about a dwarf obsessed with trains, I have completely forgotten that I am sitting naked, bar my shoes, in the company of equally naked strangers in a run-down small-town cinema on a sunny afternoon in the Fens.

Only when the film ends and they begin showing a dated naturist documentary am I again briefly aware of how cold the metal parts of a cinema seat remain, even when the heating is tropical. But soon I'm distracted by the ambiguities unfolding on the screen.

In a lengthy opening sequence, a pretty young woman, the archetype of every model who ever graced the cover of Health & Efficiency, strolls through a field of oilseed rape, accompanied by the sort of music they used to strum in Shredded Wheat adverts. She, of course, has not left her towel behind, and soon she is rubbing herself with suncream. Is it meant to be erotic? Are we supposed to believe in her innocence? Perhaps I am being naive in assuming that naturism and sex are mutually exclusive.

Suddenly, she is replaced by an interviewer who addresses an older woman whose fine and once dark-featured face stands out beneath luxuriantly permed white hair. She calls her by her name, which is Iseult, and speaks to her with such deference that I can only assume she is a celebrity in nude circles. What was it like, the interviewer wonders, to be brought up a naturist? How did she feel when she first realised that she was different from other children?

When the film ends, I am full of questions, so I seek out Tina in the foyer. A teacher who works with disturbed and challenging children, she tells me how she felt ashamed of her body after abdominal surgery left her scarred and how she overcame those fears after Mark encouraged her into naturism. Some naturists disapprove of the cinema thing, she says, because they let single men in. But it's just a bit of fun, like the 70s disco they held recently and the nude kite-flying they are planning.

Tentatively, I approach the subject of sex. "Oh, naturists like sex as much as anyone," Tina assures me. "Mark and I are very close physically." But in case I run away with the idea that nude gatherings are an excuse for an orgy, she tells the story of how people were getting dressed at the end of some naturist get-together, and the men gawped when they saw a young woman bend over because now she was wearing a skirt.

"I'm just saying that naturists like sex the same as anyone else," she tells a woman who wants to know why we are laughing. "Definitely," says the woman, disappearing into the ladies. "I'll go in here while you're doing it."

Relieved that the sex conversation has passed without embarrassment, I almost forget to ask the other question that has been bothering me. Who was that woman with the white hair in the documentary? Wasn't she called Ingrid?

"Iseult," says Mark, who has been listening from behind the ticket desk. With his long hair and wild grin he looks a little like a pirate, so when he grabs a book off a pile on the counter and tells me it costs £10, I promptly hand over a note. The book is called No Shadows Fall, and on the cover, framed in a foliage design, is a photograph of an attractive young woman kneeling beside a swimming pool. Entwined in the foliage are the words "Iseult Richardson - born into naturism", and one leaf, overlapping the picture, almost conceals her jet black pubic hair.

Gymnosophers they called themselves, although strictly that word (gymno = naked) relates to a Hindu sect committed to nudity and the contemplation of nature. And when he saw the advert in the paper - "Professional gentlemen practising gymnosophy and exercise regime would welcome any likeminded folk" - Charles "Mac" Macaskie knew he had found what he had been seeking since childhood. As a boy, he never could abide clothes, preferring to run naked on the cliffs and beaches of his native Angus. Now, having qualified as an engineer at university, he ran his own wireless repair shop in Portobello Road, west London; posed for artists at the Slade; and craved freedom.

In response to the advert, Mac and his lover Dorothy took the steam train to Hertfordshire, where, in the sylvan hamlet of Bricket Wood, they were welcomed by a small, private group of pioneering nudists. It was in their company that Mac was to learn of Paul Zimmerman, the German whose 100-acre woodland paradise, Freilichpark, would soon become the world's first naturist holiday resort. And inspired by Zimmerman's example, he knew what he must do.

Within a year, he had sold his London shop and bought 12 acres of virgin forest along the lane from his new friends in Bricket Wood. And one day, in the early spring of 1929, he and Dorothy picked their way through the undergrowth in search of a clearing where they could pitch their tent. Mac called it his "green monastery", and in the beginning it was to be a private Eden in which the pair of them might live in harmony with the woodland, practising nudism and raising a family according to their own ideals. In due course, a family arrived - first Doreen, an adopted daughter, and next, Iseult, named after Tristan's forest lover in Dorothy's favourite legend.

But as the word spread, others came to share the dream. Weekenders at first, they rented plots and cabins and laboured, naked, to build a few basic amenities. Pride of place was given to a swimming pool, an ambitious structure fed by a great wind pump. This soared above the trees and carried at its summit the name Spielplatz. The private Eden had become a public "play place", and Britain had its very first sunclub.

I intend to skim-read Iseult's autobiography, but there is something about this 1930s Utopia, with its chalets and shared meals, its leafy idealism and its Vita Glass sun lounge, that persuades me to linger. The fact that these pioneers of naturism took off their clothes seems almost incidental. With bare hands and billhooks, they had scratched and scraped at a patch of earth just three miles from St Albans until it came to resemble their particular idea of paradise. But how goes it in heaven these days?

The M25 now passes within a mile of the site, and it occurs to me that the lofty pump tower, long since felled for safety reasons, would have been a wonderful marker for the place. Not that it has ever needed much in the way of advertisement, since a certain kind of naturist - the kind who is looking for a holistic experience that goes far beyond stripping off for the beach - will always beat a path to its door.

"It's not just a question of taking your clothes off or keeping them on," says Iseult, who has kept hers on today, partly in deference to me, I suspect, but partly because the blackening sky clearly has a mind to rain. "I don't think people come to any club with a view to just taking their clothes off, or if they do, they find something deeper when they get there."

At 72, and having spent time living and working in the outside world, she's settled at Spielplatz again, in a modest wooden chalet she's had her eye on for years, tucked away in a particularly green corner of the site. "I have had the best of both worlds," she says, "having seen a good deal of the street side of life and having had the sanctity and the sanctuary of Spielplatz. And people do think of it as a sanctuary."

With three dozen permanent homes planted among the trees, and 30 more rented out each summer, Spielplatz combines the qualities of a woodland hamlet with those of a small holiday camp. There's a 1950s atmosphere, which even the recent encroachment of a nearby housing estate does little to dispel. "We've had to make ourselves more commercial now that people demand more of holidays than a tent and a Primus," says Iseult. "But my dad never wanted to be commercial - he fought against it."

She talks of her childhood, when she would sit for hours among the trees while her parents laboured nearby. "In those days, we were just accepted as highly eccentric. Yes, it's much more accepted today. People read about it in magazines, and when you go abroad, you're hard-pressed to walk along a beach without falling over a naturist somewhere. But in those days, it wasn't coupled with anything wrong. When did it change? Not until after the war.

"My father always said that the war years opened nudity to the man in the street. Before then, it was mostly professional people. EM Forster would come here, and Ursula Bloom. They came for peace. In more recent years, we've had famous actors. People know who they are, but here they are just Michael or John. Nudity is a great leveller. People from all walks of life come here and have a riotous time together. But once you put clothes on, the barriers go up."

There is a great clap of thunder now, and the rain begins smashing against the thin roof of the chalet. Iseult gets up to close the french windows that lead on to her little bit of timber decking, but not before the perfume of freshly wet woodland has filled the darkening room. Although her hair is white now, it is still the face of the girlish forest lover that glimmers in the sudden gloom.

She talks then of her parents - "extraordinary people who broke the mould" - and describes her own lifelong belief in reincarnation. "I can remember asking my mother, why do we have bodies? Bodies are such a nuisance. And she'd say that if I didn't have a body, then I couldn't wear my pretty dress. I can remember thinking that, yes, I did like my new dress, but that bodies were still a nuisance ..."

I wonder as I say goodbye, dashing for my car before the next downpour, whether behind the naturist's desire to cast off clothing there perhaps lies an even deeper urge - an urge to shed the body itself. But just then, a shower of cold water blows from the surrounding foliage and brings me down to earth with a shudder. And in that instant I understand just why the average British sun worshipper might prefer a fortnight at Cap d'Agde.