Real Naturist of the Year 2013: Tim Higgs

 

Tim Higgs of the Clover Spa and Hotel in Birmingham, Great Britain.

 

He is my Real Naturist of the Year 2013.

Serving wine, beer or champagne with your food shouldn't be world news, but in 2013 it was. In Britain, even a naturist hotel has to apply for a license to do so, and the fact that there were objections put the story squarely in the news, giving the hotel a name even outside naturist circles.

My Real Naturist of the Year Award doesn't come with prizes, money or even some artistic sculpture. It simply picks someone who did something for naturism, put it in the spotlight for a positive fact and deserves to be known for that fact. The winner also has to be a true naturist, not a celebrity who poses nude once in a while or who goes topless. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's what my Celebrity Naturist of the Year Award is for.

Tim follows in the tracks of Mark and Samantha Taylor, my first-ever Real Naturist of the Year Award winners. I read about their project to leave their 'normal' working lives in Britain behind and head for a small Greek island to start up a naturist hotel. That is a dream many people have, but only a few manage to go beyond that and turn it into reality.

Tim Higgs stayed closer to home, but he also realized what must have been a dream in a tough environment: set up a naturist hotel far away from any beaches, in a major British city, away from sun and sand.

Naturism needs more people like Tim Higgs.

No doubt we'll hear more about the Clover Spa and Hotel in 2014.

The web site is www.cloverspa.co.uk, the Twitter account is http://twitter.com/Cloverspa.