Nude Beaches

It's summer time, particularly hot summer time, so the media need extra copy to fill their web sites and pages. One simple ploy is to come up with lists: the best this and the top that.
It's nice to find that naturism can also be the subject of such a practice. Belgian Dutch-language newspaper De Standaard, one of the top papers in Belgium, did just that. It presented a top-10 of the best nude beaches in Europe. Unfortunately, the list featured not just nude beaches, and certainly not the best.
First, let's make clear what a nude beach is. It's a beach where all people can enjoy the sun and the water while not wearing any clothes. However, the newspaper mixed up beaches, naturist resort and mixed beaches.
Showing up the unfamiliarity of its editors with naturism, it also went for the most famous places with the general public, including some locations real naturists would stay away from.
The choice of Cap d'Agde, a huge naturist town in the south of France, as its number one immediately revealed the paper's lack of expertise and touched off a furious debate among readers. First of all, the place is not a beach, it's a huge town. Secondly, it has grown infamous for some goings-on of a sexual nature that are completely incompatible with true naturism. In other words, the paper completely misfired.
Another poor example is the choice of Paradise and Super Paradise beaches on the Greek island of Mykonos. Again, two famous beaches, famous because non-naturists know about it, and too many of them go there just to watch naturists, not to enjoy naturists themselves.
The 'best nude beaches in Europe' should only include beaches with the following characteristics: they are nice and comfortable, relatively easy to reach, and provide a quiet environment for all men, women and children who want to spend their day on the beach completely naked from morning until evening. Naturists should not have the feeling that too many people are just on the beach to watch others naked and not be naked themselves.
A real nude beach is also not a resort. It is not locked off from the outside world, it does not require a membership card. Don't misunderstand me, I am in favor of all-naturist and naturists-only resorts, but they don't belong in a list of nude 'beaches.' The beginning naturist will want to find a real 'nude beach' first before he or she tries a resort.
One of the resorts on the newspaper list is Valalta in the Croatian town of Rovinj close to Italy. Again, it is not a beach, it's a complete resort with camping and rooms. My disappointment with Valalta was that some parts were only accessible if you wore clothes, i.e. the main restaurant and the supermarket. It was annoying to have to change in and out of clothes all the time if you wanted to go from one to the other. Again, it was a nice place, and I certainly would recommend it to naturists for a stay of more than a week, but it is not a 'nude beach,' it's a resort.
I read the article in De Standaard and I just had to write this piece because of my dissatisfaction with the whole list. Nevertheless, if it moves people to try out naturism, good for them, only I would try other places than most of the ones they recommend. Even small beaches in the nearby Netherlands can be more fun than those mentioned on the list.
Anyway, thanks to De Standaard for naming naturism as a holiday option and for the above picture.

Skinny Dipping

British newspaper The Daily Telegraph had a list of the 10 best places to go skinny dipping yesterday. Each one illustrated by one picture.
If you judged the places by the pictures, then some of them I would definitely stay away from. Any of them having ice in the same place as a nude swimmer for example. I am much too afraid of the cold to even consider taking off my clothes in such a polar environment.
Then there is Paradise and Super Paradise Beach on the Greek island of Mykonos. Famous the world over for its nude beach. But that is just the problem. When you achieve that kind of fame, the emphasis changes from enjoying nude sunbathing to viewing nude sunbathing. In other words, you get more and more gawkers and voyeurs, and the real naturists start leaving in droves. The picture on the site showed a very crowded beach with more men in shorts than naked people. That's always the sign of a problem.
So I would go for the opposite. The first picture is the most beautiful. A quiet beach on the Spanish Balearic island of Formentera, no crowds, just real naturists. Exactly my kind of place. Or maybe just add to that a naturist hotel where I can sit on the balcony naked and write on my laptop at the same time. Gorgeous. I want to start packing my bags right now.
The 10 best spots to go skinny dipping are on view at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/6645265/Top-ten-places-to-go-skinny-dipping.html