OK, this is not just a postcard (but very, very long, in fact), but you get my drift...
if you were to put the words 'naturism' and 'Corfu' into Google, you are likely to be disappointed. Dominating many of the entries will be Mirtiotissa Beach, which I believe is the only official naturist beach on the whole of this lovely island. Neither does Corfu have a single major naturist complex, only Mitriotissa and some scattered unofficial naturist beaches, plus secluded villas where naturist renters can pay their money and do as they please. This is the case with us, and why we are calling this our first proper extended naturist holiday.
We haven't actually been to Mirtiotissa Beach yet, despite having been here for nearly a week, and we may not get there at all in the two weeks we are here, even though we are staying only a short drive (or a long walk) away. You'll understand why it is off the agenda shortly.
Although we haven't seen it with our own eyes, I can give you an accurate description of Mirtiotissa Beach (and save you the trouble of Googling) from what I know about it from the internet. It's small; tiny, in fact. The only thing that distinguishes it from the beach next door (the two divided by an almighty rock in the sea) is on one side of the rock people cling (in more ways than one) to the tiny pieces of clothing that cover bits of their bodies they do not share with the opposite sex. On the other side of the rock people have more of a ”So what?" kind of approach and no doubt feel a kind of liberation from daring to wear nothing. But it's only semi-liberation, as far as I can tell, and to be only half liberated is surely to be not liberated at all.
With no naturist resorts to return to, even those daring people who removed the final tiny pieces of clothing on the beach will, all too soon, go back to the other side of the rock and disappear behind their clothes for the rest of the day and possibly the rest of their holiday, their flirtation with naturism a brief memory to take home as a souvenir.
We (my wife and I) are luckier, or at least have aimed higher. We could have chosen a fully-fledged naturist holiday at a dedicated naturist holiday location anywhere else in the world (and no doubt will, sometime in the future), but for now we can sample everything that textile Corfu can offer, which is much, but also enjoy the luxury of being without clothes whenever we are relaxing in our villa and by its pool.
These days, even this delight is still not enough to satisfy the 'free-range naturist' within me, so, armed with Google again, I set out to find a suitably remote area where we could, say, enjoy walking in the Corfiot sun without upsetting the locals or the people who sit on the wrong side of the rock.
Surprisingly, the perfect location for naturism in Corfu, when I found it, turned out to be another beach, but one infinitely superior to the tiny official one at Mirtiotissa. I should add that if it had not been for someone calling himself and his website Captain Barefoot, I may never have found it, because (although the bulk of his website is rather out of date) Captain Barefoot knows a proper naturist beach when he sees one.
To understand the appeal of the beach, you probably need to understand the geography, and for this you need not Google but Google Maps. If you enter 'Lake Korission' into Google Maps you will see the beach in all its vast splendour, to the south-east of the lake.
Basically, Issos is a rectangular beach on the western coast of Corfu, more than a mile long and, amazingly, a third of a mile wide, with the rear part of the dunes (which also feature clumps of trees) stretching right back to a large freshwater lake. When you get to the most westerly part, where it joins Halikounas Beach (also unofficially naturist), the trees become denser, so the top end of the beach is basically a forest, on top of a small cliff, with a narrow beach below. If you are lucky - and we weren't - the tide will be out and the beach at this point will still be walkable, so rather than being a mile or so long, your walk is even longer.
Issos Beach is reached by a single road that aims for the sea but stops about 100m short of the water and forms into a circular car park, which is easily spotted on Google Maps. What Google Maps (and even Captain Barefoot) doesn't say is the car park effectively defines the dividing line between the ordinary textile world to the east and as close to a naturist paradise as we have ever discovered, to the west.
Working from east to west, there is a holiday complex at the far end, then a standard textile beach, then a shack where trendy young people hang out, then the car park. The textiles have so much room to find a suitable place to plant their parasols that even the most troubled, uptight anti-naturist puritan could not begrudge us our space, and because of the vastness of the beach, that space is gigantic.
Issos may not be an official naturist beach, so Google virtually overlooks it, but it is as near as dammit, because of its size and remoteness. That's not to say the naturists have the whole area to themselves, but when you enter the naturist section you are effectively entering another world, where it really doesn't matter whether you are wearing clothes or not.
Nobody was nude in the car park, but with hindsight (and a little bravado) we could easily have removed our clothes there and stashed them in the car. It probably wouldn't have mattered to anyone, even the families with young children. The same hindsight would have saved us some unnecessary baggage, but also perhaps given us the added thrill of being separated from our clothes.
As long as you are west of the car park, there are effectively no rules about whether you need to dress on Issos Beach. Even if textiles had any complaint, it is difficult to see how they could argue their point because nobody has defined where the borders are. There are no signs. Besides, if there is one thing more reassuring about Issos Beach than its size and remoteness, it is that it is almost deserted.
My wife and I walked well over a mile along the beach, and back, and encountered only about ten people, none of whom were the least troubled by our nude bodies. Three or four were untroubled enough by nudity to be enjoying it themselves. We'll return to the others shortly, but I must reiterate that even though we were sometimes technically walking in a no-man's-land between the textile and naturist communities, our nudity was one hundred per cent acceptable.
And one hundred per cent enjoyable. The word 'idyllic' is overused and surely always inaccurate. Nothing can ever be perfect. But if you are someone who not only feels the joy of naturism but feels it in your bones and even your soul, then I suggest a walk along Issos Beach is as idyllic as life gets.
On Issos Beach, nudity feels completely natural. Not just pleasant and a nice diversion from 'real life', but real life itself. Every breath of breeze and the arrival of every atom of energy from the sun seems like a confirmation. It is life-enhancing and literally a liberation, a delivery into a new world.
For a couple of hours it was easy to imagine the beach WAS the world, and that the world had become so at peace with itself that it had no prejudices and therefore no problems; and if it did have problems, then a couple in their fifties, who have lived life and overcome challenges and loved each other for nearly thirty years, and had now decided to lock hands and walk naked along it, was the least of its problems.
As far as we were concerned, Issos Beach was not just a new world, but the whole world, and it had joyously dispensed with the need for human beings to worry about anything, least of all clothes.
At the risk of getting too philosophical, I found the experience to be a kind of affirmation of naturism, especially free-range naturism. When one sees a beautiful location or just simply an attractive natural place - such as a forest or a hill or a beach or even just a field or stream - and instantly considers what a perfect spot it would be to be naked in, it can be dispiriting to realise that the vast majority of others feel no such connection and wouldn't begin to understand the appeal. Can so many people be so wrong and comparatively few of us so right? Well, naturism on Issos Beach doesn't just feel right, but seems so natural that it must be right.
Even my wife enjoyed it. I say 'even' because she doesn't really 'get' naturism in the way that someone who is a born naturist does, and certainly would be horrified at the prospect of most forms of free-range naturism; not that she is unreasonable. I doubt whether she will ever really understand the true joy of naturism, but she certainly enjoyed that moment, and although it was not being nude that, for her, put the icing on a perfect morning, she had to agree, at least, that it was better for it. And even she could see that this is what naturism is really about, and no amount of time spent on a handkerchief-sized piece of beach, separated from the textiles by a rock, could even hint at the true joy of our morning.
One of the beauties of Issos Beach is that it is where worlds collide, but with no fallout. More than half of the people we passed as we walked were clothed, but the two species (not to mention my wife, a kind of hybrid) happily coexisted. I admired the textiles for their tolerance, but was puzzled by and even pitied them for their folly in dressing. It was a golden opportunity turned down, and, in particular, two separate young women, who passed us in bikinis, made me wonder.
If there is a god, and he or she did create mankind after all, then we can all agree that his or her best work was the design of young women's bodies, which are a thousand times more beautiful than any rose; but he or she is also a cruel and wasteful god for then instilling in the minds of these young women a doubt about their own attractiveness that causes them to dislike or even loathe their bodies and want to cover up.
Even if I were not a naturist, I could never understand what terrible twisted feelings drive a young woman to hide her beautiful body, as if ashamed, and why those with less issues about self-image, such as maturer people, who should know better, should also care a fig about what other people think. They, at least, should have learned to question the norm and rediscover their instincts.
But even aside from these deeper thoughts, I'm astounded that a lone person - female or otherwise - isn't overcome with a curiosity that is at least strong enough to wonder how it would feel to try - just try - walking along naked for a while on an almost deserted beach. You would have thought they would do it if only to discover why even the couple in their fifties, who just walked by, have chosen to cast off their clothes. As weak as the desire to get out of one's clothes is in certain individuals, if you don't submit to the call of liberation (or at least curiosity) on Issos Beach, then you probably never will. And you will never experience freedom in your life. And that is a sad prospect, and saddest of all if you are a young woman.
Yet even the bikini-clad young women were not the greatest enigma on Issos Beach. Near the end of our experience we stopped and rested by sitting on the shore and then walking into the sea. Walking behind us for a while, close enough for us to see they were fully clothed, had been another couple. After we stopped and they drew nearer, we could see were in their forties. We watched as they stopped too, just as we had done, to rest and enter the sea.
With only us pair of naturists in sight, they felt confident enough to strip off and enjoy their short respite naked, and I would like to think they dared to be nude because of us, that we had inspired them. I dare say there were tiny pieces of beachwear in their backpack, if they had needed something to cling to, other than each other. They even enjoyed a little cavorting in the water - not erotic, but clearly friendly - and they no doubt enjoyed the collision and embrace of skin on skin in the warm water. Perhaps, I thought, they might even be converted to naturism after this brief (apparently first) nude frolic.
But no. Barely (pun intended) had they emerged from the water before they quickly dressed, slung the backpack over a shoulder and turned to walk away in the direction from which they came, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps the memory will give them a giggle when they remember the moment. Perhaps they will even confess to visiting the naturist beach when they recall their holiday to friends. They may even blush and say they skinnydipped, or maybe they will keep the whole thing as their special secret dare. But I hope, for their sakes, that they do not wake up, one day, and realise their harmless fun could have been the start of something good, and if that day comes, I hope they don't regret the intervening years as a missed opportunity.
Even we (my wife and I) missed an opportunity on Issos Beach. While the beach is almost deserted, the vast dunes and presumably the forest at the top end are literally deserted. For half an hour we ventured into this wilderness, and for half an hour we neither saw nor heard another living soul.
But it was a hostile environment under the hot midday sun, which baked the sand so hot that bare feet were inadequate, and even flip-flops didn't offer enough protection from the burning sand that flicked over, on every footstep, on to the top of my wife's feet. My closed shoes were fine, and if I had been alone I would have pressed on to sample walking beside the lake and in the forest: two other new worlds to explore, where the prevailing culture was naturist-friendly. But we had to turn back to the beach.
There are many ironies of Issos. For a start, it's just a beach, just like Mirtiotissa. Yet, rather than one that seems to contain naturists inside a small area, like a zoo, where an artificial acceptance and an artificial liberation prevails, this one is open-ended and allows you to be transported to a different world altogether, where your naturist instincts are not just tolerated but can be - and I am careful not to overdo the description - celebrated.
There seems to be a dichotomy in naturism, with one branch seeking 'free range naturism' as opposed to the 'factory-farmed naturism' (to quote the Free Range Naturism website's brilliant phrase) that exists in clubs and, in particular, on official naturist beaches. One of the most pleasing things about Issos is it is the perfect marriage of the two: conservative enough (being a beach) to be acceptable to those with factory-farmed tastes, but enough of a wilderness to satisfy the 'free-rangers'.
Issos Beach, in short, is a celebration of liberation and the freedom of spirit that comes with stepping out of your clothes and walking in a new and better world - and proof, if it were needed, that Google doesn't always have the answers.
