How was your month for Free Range Naturism?

[Davie]

It's been a good week. I went on a local walk in a group of 19 followed by a visit to my naturist (non free range!) swim. Wednesday I had  a naturist visit to some gardens in Shropshire and am now staying at naturist Lodge in Mid Wales. It has its own hot tub and I can walk straight out onto the hills. I've not seen another soul whilst out walking. Friday was a scorcher, yesterday rain and the coming week looks idea  sunny but not too hot.

Davie

[jbeegoode]

So Davie, you and Nuduke are in two different countries?
Jbee

[Davie]

Quite likely
I live in England and Nuduke may do as well. I'm visiting Wales the country of my birth. I'm British and a Welshman.

The United Kingdom  has four countries, England, Wales, Scotland  and Northern Ireland.  Last three have their own parliament and government. England is governed from London which has certain powers the other countries don't have, e.g. defence.

It can be confusing for people outside our islands. GB or Great Britain is England  Wales and Scotland. UK includes Northern Ireland.

No wonder we're such a mixed up bunch!

Davie 

[jbeegoode]

Okay, I am seriously confused as to how you all are working things out over there. You'd think that 50 states instead of four, would be more confusing...maybe not so....

Nudity law and enforcement vary by individual state, or does English parliament and its law from constitution determine a blanket policy? Scotland recently was looking at independence, again, but their treatment of Stephen Gough as the naked rambler was independent.

Uh oh, now I have a stream of questions outside of naked and nudity...but hat's probably one for a late night campfire conversation in the forest...or two or three nights.
Jbee

[Peter S]

So …

The United Kingdom is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Britain is a big island made up of England, Scotland and Wales. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved governments, which means they take care of themselves up to a point, then the U.K. government takes over; England has no separate government, just the U.K. one.

Policing is one of the devolved powers, though generally the laws they police are the same. Nudity is legal in U.K. law, but is not always socially acceptable. (A good analogy is that there is no law saying we have to form an orderly queue, but it is socially unacceptable to jump the queue, and is still liable to incur the death penalty from an outraged mob).

Police forces in England and (I think) Wales are organised broadly by county; how strictly or otherwise they enforce or interpret any particular law can vary from county to county, depending on individual officers. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate police forces, which again operate according to their own preferences and prejudices which can reflect the national mindset as much as the strict law.

Steven Gough managed to walk naked through England from Land’s End to the Scottish border with very few problems, but then got repeatedly locked up in Scotland because the Scots applied different rules to nakedness; I understand things are lot freer up there these days. Ireland is generally a bit uptight about bodies and nakedness so nudity, public or otherwise, seems less common there. Don’t hear much from Wales, but it has lots of remote countryside where police never go.

A park area outside Nottingham (England) known as Sherwood Forest (yes, robin hood’s old stomping ground) has become a free range naturist haven, largely through the efforts of a hardy few standing for their rights and working with the local authorities; there are even official notices up saying that public nudity is legal, naturists will be seen, get over it! There are plenty of locals who are now used to naked people (nearly all men) walking the area, but now and then there’s a Mr Angry or two who make a fuss, but get told by the police to stop shouting.

The recent spell of good weather has produced a flurry of articles in local newspapers/websites explaining that it’s perfectly legal to be naked in your garden, and elsewhere - there seems to be a pro-naturist faction at these newspapers’ head office who makes sure the correct line is put out. However, these articles always carry the caveat from the local police that people should be careful about not upsetting the neighbours, which one can interpret as the police discouraging people from getting naked so they don’t get irate calls from neighbours that police officers then have to deal with; police everywhere hate to be caught in the middle of neighbour disputes, and trying to convince someone who “knows” that indecent exposure is illegal that being naked is not illegal is not why they joined the force.

Hope that helps, JBee

[jbeegoode]

 Thank-you, very much. That clears things up.

Seems that I generally had a decent idea of the system, but wasn't completely sure and missing some facts.  For instance, a biggy,  I didn't know that Wales still carried so much political weight. I thought that it was just an old border of a defunct country, just the place that The Prince of Wales came from, an old title from a bygone day, no more than a region. Scotland has a long history of independence movements for various reasons clear up to more recently, but hearing that Wales is with a similar autonomy is a surprise.

So they are like states. Are signs posted like "Welcome to Wales" like here each state declares itself on the side of the highway? Here, going from state to state, can be a great deal of difference legally. Nudity laws, gun laws, different police forces, each with its own legislature. There are no border crossings here, other than some states checking trucks for commerce and fruit/plant restrictions. For our cross country trip, I had to research gun law for each state, got a special Arizona concealed carry permit that carried weight similarly in many states, but not New York. The nudity laws are all very different state to state, so I printed out the law beforehand and had copies available in case I by chance got stopped for something while nude. Rural Interstate highway speed limits change state to state. Often 80mph in Utah, 75 in Arizona, more densely populated states tend to keep speed down to 70mph.
Jbee

[jbeegoode]

June's gone!...quick!

I didn't get out much, nude. I've been working around the house here. My little 1/4 acre enclave has me pretty comfortable I do however, miss my nature communing. DF has been called to Georgia, No telling for how long. Her family is having health issues and needs help. She's been gone a couple of weeks.

Before she left, she was housesitting for a friend with a swimming pool and sauna, out on the east side. I of course made myself available to help out over there. I've got to get myself a waterhole here at home to go with that sauna, after that experience. Anyway, that just distracted us away from nature and hiking for two plus weeks.

We have been having a weekly sweat here. The extreme heat has been keeping attendance down. We had to change the schedule to evening cooler hours. The garden has been struggling with the dry heat, but it does my heart good to have friends rambling around happy to be safely naked and communing in the sauna after the covid obstructions lasting so dang long. Some come over and nearly rip off their clothing, going on about how they appreciate the opportunity and how good it feels.

We had had plans to road trip to the 50th Annual Rainbow  Gathering in Colorado, before the illnesses struck. Oh well. I'm planning an SUL solo backpack trip if the monsoon doesn't stop me. If it does, there is Redington Pass....
Jbee

[Davie]

I did some great walking whilst in Wales. I could walk out of the lodge's garden straight onto the nearby hills. The first evening walk a saw a couple of badgers and there were lots of red kytes about. I did a walk up to the nearest trig point* with wonderful views. Later during the week I did a walk to the Radnor Forest were the hills top out at just over 600 metres. It was a hot day but the walking was wonderful. I only came across one couple and their dog whilst out. I was of course naked. He ignored me but she gave me a cheery good morning.

Davie 
* For those not familiar with the term "trig point". There are concrete pillars placed on the summit, or near the summit of many hills and mountains. There were used by the UK Ordnance Survey mapping organisation to assist with mapping using triangulation. They also exist on some church tower and on low lying ground will be on the highest mound. I think the lowest is at about -0.5 metre near Ely in Cambridgeshire! The photo shows me at one.

[nuduke]

Dang dang dang dang!!
I've just returned from a touring holiday in the SW of England, starting with a wedding then on to the Eden Project (on my bucket list)  https://www.edenproject.com/
then up for a couple of days in a hotel on Saunton Sands, Devon then on to some friends in N.Devon.  Saunton Sands is a naturist beach, I read up, and I had high hopes of getting a bit of naturist activity there and I had one afternoon for Naturist ramblings.  I am SOOOO unlucky - the weather was awful.  Cold, occasional drizzle and generally grey.  Nevertheless in my one afternoon's opportunity, I hike off down the beach to try and discover the naturist bit with every intention of getting naked.  But neither could I find any naturists (probably too cold) nor in the shorts and 'T' that I was travelling light in, it was mighty chilly and not very conducive to getting naked even if I located the naturist area, which I didn't.  All along the mile or so of beach there were textiles surfing or walking dogs, children etc., so nowhere to get out of range to be a naturist in.  Can't tell you how disappointed I was.


Davie, where is your naturist Lodge in Wales?  Maybe I'll give something like that a try.


Er.. Just to add to the description of the sociopolitical structure of the UK, Davie and Peter have pointed out some of the differences but the laws and infrastructure systems are pretty uniform across the countries of the UK and yes, Jbee, we do have Welcome to Wales, Scotland etc signs on the borders.
Most of the autonomy of the regions is about how they spend the social care, health, education and welfare money issued by central government and there are a few differences in local taxation and law enforcement.  Constitutional matters, Defence, Foreign affairs, immigration, drug control and most other matters of state are reserved by the Westminster (UK) parliament.  It's nothing like as variable as between US states.  There is a major 'disjoint' in giving each nation separate powers and a governmental assembly:  England does not have it's own regional government!  England's population is about 57million of the UK total of 68m.  But the minorities - Scots 6m, Welsh 3m seem to have more say in their own determination.  And some of the largest conurbations such as Greater Manchester have a population similar to Wales and greater than Northern Ireland but they don't have the same sort of autonomy.  Britain is not a fiercely logical place!
John

[Davie]

Davie, where is your naturist Lodge in Wales?  Maybe I'll give something like that a try.

For details see https://www.selfcateringholidayswales.co.uk/  There is a bungalow and the lodge. He has another non-naturist site and lodge too. Personally I think the lodge we stayed at is best as it opens up directly onto the hills and fields. The owner Chris is a member of BN

Davie 

[jbeegoode]

Whaoh Nuduke, only 6 million Scots! There's roughly that many Arizonans! No, I just checked there are 5.3 million Scotts and 7.1 mil Arizonans, The square miles of Scotland are 30,000 and Arizona 114,000. The biggest town, greater Glasgow, is slightly smaller than Tucson and we are dwarfed by the huge Phoenix megalopolis, where most Arizonans live. I figured it to be a totally different story.

I've always pictured it to be that much of it is a harsh environment as to be sparsely populated. It seems to be less the size of Baja Arizona (where we do most of our nude travels), with twice the population. Much of southern Arizona is an irrigated breadbasket. There has always been talk here of seceding from the rest of the state (unequal representation domination), but Scotland has the balls to become its own country! Ha! wouldn't that be fun!

So, Eden Project looks interesting. I have my own Eden Project here on my 1/4 acre, which is quite a handful. Part of our Sweat community mission statement and my ethics have to do with sustainable practices. I have a bladed mesquite bosque, turned into an arugula farm, turned into a suburban/urban subdivision, in which the owners were hoarders and old car nuts. I had a huge eucalyptus tree and two half dead diminutive trees...and some invasive weeds, when I arrived here. I'm setting rainwater harvesting, planting trees (edible drought tolerant) and making a food garden, with a meditation area dominating, using my acquired knowledge of desert ecology. My Eden is for naked inhabitants...not so many animals, however...and he will see that it was good...

We have Biosphere II north of Town. It was an experiment as a potential space station, originally. There were a few astronauts living in it for a couple of years, until that got compromised. Now, it must be similar to these golf ball structures that I see on Eden website. The idea was to create a sustainable ecology for space travel. Ants took over at one point. You just can't create a complex ecology so easily, they found.  Research is still being done there, along with tourism. They have a mini-ocean, jungle desert, etc.

I remember when a big thing in the British empire was atrium/greenhouses with plant specimens from all over the world. Perhaps we are maturing, or maybe just getting more extravagant. How did you find it?
Jbee

[Peter S]

Scotland is a country of two halves, the Lowland with farmland and cities, the Highlands with moors and mountains. Their names are descriptive, the country being split by a geological fault line known as the Great Glen. There are also the islands, like the Shetlands and the Hebrides, out in the northern waters. All the Hollywood ideas of Scotland - kilts and tartan and so forth - tend to be Highland, where it’s grouse moors and sheep farming. Traditionally the Highlands were the hotbed of revolt while the Lowlands were more civilised. Scottish nationalism and potential independence is a bit of a hot topic here at the moment. I will refrain from digging into that debate here, except to mention that the current devolved Scottish government is five years late and three times over budget trying to provide two new ferries to serve the islands . I suspect ferries are not a hot topic in Arizona.

[jbeegoode]

There used to be a ferry here in Tucson on the Santa Cruz River. That was about 100 years ago. The rivers have been drained by wells. There is a campaign to reclaim more water in individual properties during rains and recharge the aquifer allowing the rivers to flow again. These water routes have bridges these days spanning sand and concrete rivers. Then there are those dams. Not too big on ferries, yup.

Now then devolved government in Arizona...whew! Most people don't pay attention to the state legislature and couldn't tell you their local rep's names. The result is a ridiculous control and nationally embarrassing racism, conspiracy mongers, off the wall dumbasses being laughed at. On just about every indicator, we are way down in the high forties out of the fifty states (education, democratic values, pregnancy,etc.). I'd bet big that Scotland couldn't even begin to compete on the devolved government scale with Arizona.
Jbee

[ric]

ive not been online a lot lately.  our seaside flat has been suffering from wind, it always seems to be blowing a gale. though were about 2 miles from church norton beach weve only actually stripped off on it twice this year. I have managed a few counrtyside meanders in the last month or so , mainly in the new forest or the wilds of wiltshire.   

Scots law is actually significantly different from the rest of the uk.     its broadly similar but the details can vary.  property transfer is the probably most obvious to us southerners.

down here were next to wales and their independence movement is just a pain in the butt.some thirty odd years ago they decided the welsh language was dying out.... it was only spoken by the shepherds up in the hills.   now its taught in welsh schools and all signs have to be in both languages.   but they decided with roadsigns to put the welsh on top . you naturally read the sign from the top as you speed past it most times your still on the gobbledegook and youve passed on up the road,  right pain for the visitor.

i used to do a lot of work in rural west wales , when trying to find the site it was pointless asking for directions , you just had to show the written paperwork as most of the placenames were totally unpronouncable.

[yeldew]

some thirty odd years ago they decided the welsh language was dying out.... it was only spoken by the shepherds up in the hills.   now its taught in welsh schools and all signs have to be in both languages.   but they decided with road signs to put the welsh on top . you naturally read the sign from the top as you speed past it most times your still on the gobbledegook and you've passed on up the road,  right pain for the visitor.

I totally agree.
Not visitor friendly.
And certainly not good for road safety.
Norman.