Brenda Fitzsimons
The naturist trail: ‘Once you try it, there’s no going back’
Pat Gallagher, president of the Irish Naturist Association, and his wife, Mary, are among the few in Ireland willing to speak publicly about the lifestyle. They started off by accident, says Pat
You might think that nudists would be fairly visible and easy to track down. Isn’t there a latent exhibitionism in casting your clothes to the wind and stepping out mother-naked into the sunshine? An out-and-proud statement of personal freedom? But when I set out to find them, it turns out that many Irish naturists are keen to keep their identities, if not their bodies, firmly under wraps, and at least some of them are as slippery as eels.
A prospective encounter with a secret group of nudists from north Co Antrim looks promising until it becomes clear that the price of meeting them was the surrender of my own clothes, in the interests of creating “a level playing field”.
“Go on: dare to bare,” they repeatedly urge me. When I decline, pleading a preference for private nudity – I have no problem leaping naked into the surf on a remote Donegal beach, and have done so, but I don’t want anyone else around to watch me do it – the trail suddenly goes cold. Continued…Read full original article…
Source: The Irish Times
Original publication Aug 25, 2014
Posted on NatCorn 3rd May 2018