Naked European Walking Tour 2017

[John P]

Dan, Ralph and I flew to Europe on Aer Lingus, because they offered a reasonable fare for a multi-city trip, from Boston to London and then back to Boston from Munich. But it meant we had to accept layovers in Dublin both ways.

My copyright 2017. No copying without permission, especially on Tumblr.
                        
   

	This is Dublin airport, where all the planes are green.		And all the signs are in two languages!		Now we're in Bangor, in the Welsh-speaking part of Wales, and look—all the signs are in two languages!
	Penny took us out on a stroll to see the totally spurious grave of the faithful dog, Gelert. She photographed the three heroes, bent on glorious deeds! Behind a gate with a salmon motif.		Penny and Chris, our Anglo-American-Welsh hosts. They're friends from NEWT2014.		Next day, we climbed Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales. This is a popular route called “The Miners' Path”.
	There was a waterfall where Dan showed the first outdoor naturist pose of the trip.		Then the path got steeper, but you can see how busy it was.		When we reached the top, clouds had moved in, obscuring the view, except the view of me.
	Our guide Chris decided to go down the mountain on the cog railway, so we had to learn the route.		We took another path down, staying higher on the mountainside. You can see the trail junction uphill from the lake.		It was less busy than the Miners' Path, so some nudity was possible.
	That evening, there was time for a walk in the gorge, near Chris' house.		The gorge has a cave with a resident guru.		Next morning, Chris used his well-equipped kitchen to prepare breakfast.
	Then he led us on a hike in an area where we could walk in comfort.		However, the path became difficult to follow in high grass and ferns.		The people have moved out and left this place to the sheep.
	The path could be a little obscure.		And the map wasn't entirely helpful.		Then we got onto the high moors.
	And then back down again. Ignore that nuclear power plant.		On the way home, we stopped at Rhaeadr Ddu, “Black Waterfall”.		A pleasant swim ensued, though the water was cold and the small rocks were unfriendly to feet.
	The following day, on our way to the station, Chris took us to Newborough Beach, on the island of Anglesey, with the mountains visible on the mainland.		Then it was back to London for an overnight, and off on Eurostar the next morning. Traveling under the English Channel was an enthralling experience.		We changed trains at Brussels and Cologne. Here's Dan using Deutsche Bahn's wifi as Germany streams past outside.
	That night we reached Lucerne in Switzerland, and here we are out on Lake Lucerne the next day. But that's in the next episode.

                     

[nudewalker]

You got me hooked! Going to leave on a short excursion myself so there should be plenty to look at when I get back. Nice work and excited to see more.

[jbeegoode]

ea, let 'er rip! Great start.
Jbee

[eyesup]

Looks like you were very busy traveling. What was the longest in one spot?

The 12th picture down with the pose above the lake on Miners Track looked familiar. Jbee posted a video of a lady swimming in a lake very much like that one. See the post here. Click on the link in the post. John, I think it was posted after you joined here, so you might not have seen it.

Davie mentions later in that thread that he thought it was Snowden. It looked to me like the same lake. Did either of you take a dip?

Duane

[John P]

We got the lake ferry in order to go out to the famous clifftop hike on the Bürgenstock, a mountain across the lake from Lucerne. The walkway was built by the owners of a hotel that's on the mountaintop, which you can see in the first picture. The hotel is currently being renovated into a luxurious resort, and the work includes rebuilding the funicular that comes up from the lake. So, we walked up.                        
   

	We're approaching the dock at the foot of the mountain.		The path up the mountain started through an orchard of rare apple varieties, with a label on each tree.		Then it entered the woods, and nudity became possible. It was a long steep climb.
	We got a view over farmland down to the lake.		The cliff path is carved out of the rock.		There are continuous views over Lake Lucerne.
	And you're always being reminded that you're very high up.		There are some short sections of tunnel that provide a little break.		Did we really climb up this far?
	Yet another view.		Eventually the cliff path ended, and we chose a different way down, hoping for few passers-by.		Woodcutters had been at work, stacking next winter's firewood.
	The path down took us past some friendly animals.		We also passed a disused funicular.		The final section was a flight of metal stairs that took us down to a lakeside road.
	Along the road we found a small park, where the swimming looked tempting, and a picnicking German couple didn't object to nudity.		So a swim in Lake Lucerne occurred. Then we went to a nearby station and got a train back to town.		The next day, we left Lucerne by the lake ferry again, this time traveling the length of the lake, which took 2 hours. Unfortunately the day started with rain, with low cloud.
	Our fellow passengers included a group of army trainees, who were happy that the rain had stopped.		At the town of Flüelen, we had an hour to wait for the post bus, but they had a monster sound device to amuse us. Our plan was to travel over the Klausen Pass, a famously scenic route.		The bus passed through the town of Altdorf, home of the legendary hero William Tell. Here he is with his crossbow over his shoulder, and his young son by his side.
	The clouds stole the views we had hoped to get. Here we are at the summit, where buses meet and turn around.		The post bus has right of way on the mountain roads, but cows don't always agree.		As we got down to the lowlands, there was more to see.
	Then we got onto another train, which took us into Austria.		Our destination was the ski resort of St Anton am Arlberg, just east of the Arlberg Pass. We arrived just as the sun went behind the mountains.		The ski lifts take off right from the village, behind the hotels, and our hotel gave us a pass good for a day's riding.
	There were just the three of us on the chair lift, so why not ride in comfort?		That's our shadow. I told Dan, "Stick your arm out" and in fact you can just see it.		Is this fun, or what?
	At the top, the wildflowers were everywhere.		There weren't many people around, so a comfortable stroll was possible.		With mountain views in every direction.
	There's snow on the peaks, but we didn't have time to get there.		Cue “The hills are alive” etc		Wild lupins.
	Coming down, we had to be dressed because so many people were coming up.		Then we rode another lift, this time a gondola. We weren't going to get a car all to ourselves.		In fact, they pack 'em in.
	Must we look at more mountains?		We managed to get away from the crowds to take some pictures.		OK Dan, but it's time to be heading back to the station.
	So, another train ride.		And in the town of Wörgl, first we met our friend Milt, who had flown in to Munich that morning. Then Clarisse and Roland arrived, two of the group leaders. They needed to pick up groceries and couldn't take passengers, but they carried our luggage.		We rode up to the village in the hills on the local bus, then walked to the house. This was our first view of it.

                     


My copyright 2017. No copying without permission, especially on Tumblr.

[eyesup]

Great photo layout John.
At only 1400’ (434 m) Lake Lucerne couldn’t have been too chilly. How was the water?

The trails look wonderful and like a good cardio workout. Any encounters other than the couple? Is it an area accustomed to the occasional nude hiker? The idea of casually walking about in that place is appealing.

Duane

[John P]

The water in Lake Lucerne was very pleasant, cool but not chilly. We didn't have any encounters in Switzerland, which might have been a good thing, because I've heard that socially, it's a fairly conservative country. Up on the Bürgenstock walk there were a fair number of people, and as you can see, it wasn't possible to look very far ahead, so we stayed clothed there, and then found a little-used path down to lake level. But maybe you remember that a few years ago, the canton of Appenzell banned nude hiking after they felt they were being abused by German visitors. A guy was prosecuted there and then appealed, but I think he ended up losing. Anyway, if one canton had to pass a law against nudity, it would seem as if nudity is legal where they haven't passed such a law, which is all the other cantons! When we got to Austria we tried to walk where we wouldn't be seen, but once the distance was more than a few hundred yards we just decided that nobody would mind, or if that failed, at least they couldn't catch us.

Edited to add response to Duane's question on August 22. I looked at the video here: https://vimeo.com/134002940 and yes, I'm pretty sure that at least some of the footage was taken at Llyn Llydaw, the larger of the two lakes on the side of Snowdon (Glaslyn is smaller and higher up), but some of the shots didn't include enough background to be make it clear what the location was. She doesn't explain how she manages to do her swimming in such a frequently visited spot, but I imagine it's a lot less crowded in winter! The picture of Dan was indeed taken above Llyn Llydaw. Compare my picture of Llyn Llydaw and Glaslyn (the 11th one in that posting) with the one on Wikipedia's page about Glaslyn:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaslyn

[nuduke]

My goodness me!  Corking travelogue there, John.  Thanks so much for the effort involved in posting that lot.  And in a grid too!  How does that work?


John

[John P]

The grid is actually a table, which I wrote via a spreadsheet. I was able to load the URLs for all the pictures at once, and I copied all the BBCode onto every line. The captions obviously had to be done individually, but then I just did a mass copy of everything into the post window here. It looks weird, but it doesn't need to be pretty. Imgur is good for images, because it generates thumbnails automatically if you just add "t" at the end of the file name before ".jpg".

Code: [Select]

[table]
[tr] [td][url= http://i.imgur.com/CtuwtpN.jpg ][img] http://i.imgur.com/CtuwtpNt.jpg [/img][/url][/td][td][br]We're approaching the dock at the foot of the mountain.
[/td] [td][url= http://i.imgur.com/JIGikTc.jpg ][img] http://i.imgur.com/JIGikTct.jpg [/img][/url][/td][td][br]The path up the mountain started through an orchard of rare apple varieties, with a label on each tree.
[/td] [td][url= http://i.imgur.com/b7ISO6y.jpg ][img] http://i.imgur.com/b7ISO6yt.jpg [/img][/url][/td][td][br]Then it entered the woods, and nudity became possible. It was a long steep climb.


[JOhnGw]

Flickr offers an equivalent facility.

[eyesup]

She doesn't explain how she manages to do her swimming in such a frequently visited spot, but I imagine it's a lot less crowded in winter!

And colder! What was impressive about the clip was the beauty of it and the fact she was swimming in snow melt on a mountain in the winter.

And John, you didn’t say whether you were as brave a soul as Ms. Brooks was in swimming naked in such a cold environment!

Duane

[jbeegoode]

My video card went belly up. I Kept thinking I would be missing this. Oh what fun to finally see it.
Jbee

[John P]

We did not swim that day, on account of crowds and lack of time. But here are a couple of pictures from the Naked European Walking Tour in 2014, where we visited a mountain lake with snow on the slopes, and some people did swim. I recall Dan and Ralph both went in, but I didn't!

[eyesup]

Bracing! I would love to have been there. Not just for a dip in the lake but the hike to get there.

Duane

[John P]

OK lovely naturists, here is the next episode of my saga, this time actually featuring the title act, the Naked European Walking Tour. We had a group of about 40 hikers, but around 10 of them were in the "tent group" rather than the hut itself. What this smaller section did was to make 3 short backpacking trips of a single night each, returning to the hut on alternate nights. When in residence, the tent group set up camp on the lawn. Roland (he's Dutch) led the backpackers, and Pascal and Clarisse, from France, were in charge of the rest of us. I think the captions will explain everything else.
                  
   

	We started with a little crisis—someone had driven his car too far off the driveway. I'm not sure how this got resolved.		Everyone was assigned a room, either by name or nationality.		The backpackers are setting up their tents on the lawn.
	Roland explains his plans, to a skeptical audience.		These pictures show who everyone is—here are the hikers from Britain, Singapore, Ireland, France, America and Luxembourg.		Then Belgium, Slovakia, Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.
	Every morning, Pascal posted information about the day's walk, in three languages.		Next morning, the view down the valley, and the flower box on the balcony railing, and a pair of boots.		The backpackers are dismantling their camp.
	The group assembles outside the house.		That red cord on the ground is the line beyond which you're supposed to be clothed, because of the neighbors' view.		We're walking, though not in uniform yet.
	Now properly dressed, crossing a stream.		And up through the woods.		Then up the ski slope.
	And along a track.		Lunch while textile hikers pass by, and then we separated from the backpackers.		Off we go up the hill.
	A few scenes along the path. I won't write captions for all of them.
					This is a hunter's stand, very common in Germany and Austria. But we had to investigate it.
			Now descending into the valley.		Little chapels are quite common in the Austrian mountains, just left open for anyone to visit.
	Although it's small, the interior is quite elaborate.		A country hotel, with flower boxes and an observer.		Entering a village, with an Alpine church and a Volksschule.
	Resting in the shade by a barn with firewood.		After the hike, we need to get re-hydrated!		An evening view down the valley.
	At dinner, some people shared delicacies from their home regions. Not everyone was immediately enthusiastic.		Next day, we drove to our location and started from a parking lot.		Here we are on the trail, with Rainer in the lead, barfuß.
	Then up the trail again.		Now we're up near a mountain lake.
	We had lunch there. I have proof.		Then upward again, to visit a smaller lake.
	Eventually we could see down the other side of the mountain.		An extremely rugged hiker, with a little sunburn.		For those who got down the trail first, there was time for a quick swim.
	Back at the house, re-hydration again.		Food and drink, and good company.
	Another local favorite.		Looks like we're done for tonight.

               


My copyright 2017. No copying without permission, especially on Tumblr.