The weather is pretty remarkable across Europe right now. Even here on the Spanish coast it will top out at 32 degrees over the next 2-3 days, and that’s with the effect of being cooled by coastal breezes. Inland? Almost intolerable.

I once read an article about how, by mid-century, global warming would result in the likes of the Mediterranean countries becoming regularly ‘intolerable’ in the summer months. Where the direction of travel is mostly in a southern direction now, it was suggested that eventually it would go the other way, with Spaniards, Portuguese, French and Greeks all escaping to northern Europe, where their holidays would entail escaping the blistering sun in favour of something more tolerable. I arched an eyebrow when I read it (and it was probably long before the whole global warming debate became more front and centre as it is now)

The photo above replicates me yesterday, pen and paper in hand, scribbling notes for SLN-related articles (such as this one), and slightly ‘covered up’ because, well, sometimes you need to afford yourself a little bit of protection!

This morning I’ve taken my morning walk along the shoreline, naked in the early morning sunshine, gone back to the apartment to grab my laptop, and I’m now sitting in the shade having ‘desayuno’ (breakfast). Cafe con leche, milky coffee, and a tostado.

While there are dozens of places I could drive or walk to in a short space of time, I’d have to cover up for those, as they’re all beyond the naturist zone. So I give my trade to the same place, every morning, every year we’re here. For the naturism, the view, and the ambience. Where I am right now can be seen, in the distance, in a couple of the photographs in the small gallery below. Stay hydrated out there!

Ella

In my previous post I mentioned that, given the current European heatwave, it wouldn’t be long until stories of public nudity came along. Three hours later…

The same story is in German here.

German security guards ask topless women to cover up. Others strip off in solidarity. The police stop a nude moped rider. All taking place in Munich and Brandenburg.

Expect more of these real life naturist type stories to follow if the heatwave continues. 🙂 Extreme heat is the best advert for naturism, ever.

Ella

Ffrom writing about the miserable weather, a week ago, Europe is now basking in a killer heatwave.

OK, I’ve relocated to Spain, where I should expect much better temperatures than at home, but this is content-wide now. Home (Scotland) is enjoying temperatures in the low to mid 20s, the south of England to be near the 30 mark at the weekend.

Madrid and Paris are to see the temperature hit 40+ in the next few days :-O

And it’s at times like this where stories are re-told in the media, and I regularly hear first-hand, that my ‘naturism now makes perfect sense’. Indeed. Why wear clothes when going naked can be much more comfortable!

OK, you do NOT want to be naked, outdoors, unprepared, in 40 degrees of heat. But now is the time to think of sleeping nude, being nude indoors and generally embracing the idea of naked living of you aren’t naturist. You will almost certainly feel more comfortable for it, indoors or out, like the people enjoying naturism in the gallery below.

It makes logical sense.

Jim and Ella enjoy cooling off with some outdoor naturism.

Poor Susan is meanwhile stuck indoors working on her photographs.
But the nude living experience makes it a much more comfortable environment for her.

Ella

Hooray! Internet is back on this evening 🙂

As I’ve not been scribbling at notes for SLN posts, and then typing them up in the evenings when the children are in bed and a bottle of crisp white wine has been opened 🙂 I’ve been chatting around the pool, where ‘keeping an eye on the little ones’ is part and parcel of the day.

To that end, I got into conversation with a French mother who speaks very good English, and I speak a little French, so we’ve got quite friendly as our children are the same age and, despite the language barrier, seem to be having a great time without the need for a common language.

A first naturist holiday for the lady in question, and the entire holiday her much more enthusiastic husband’s idea. None of the family were previous naturist. He, of course, apparently stripped within seconds of arrival, much to their children’s amusement, but neither of them appeared to need much encouragement to get out of their clothes at the end of a long, tiring drive through France and Spain, taking to naturism as children always do.

The mother was more reticent, and I watched her on the first day, bikini-clad, looking a bit ill at ease.

By day two, the bikini top had been discarded (it seems she did have some previous experience of that in her youth) but the body language was very much ‘keep the boobs covered at all times’.

Day three saw her throw caution to the wind regarding toplessness, and she was quite content to wander between the pool area and their apartment wearing nothing but her bikini thong.

Today? The thong has been discarded. It seems, as usual, that the hurdle of making a nude debut is the hardest thing to do, but once you’re over that hurdle, you forget about it in a short time.

When speaking to her about her decision to go fully nude, this afternoon, she said that everyone else looked so relaxed and at ease with their bodies that she decided to join the party. Tomorrow, I’ve asked her to join me on my usual 7am stroll along the beach, a lovely ‘wake up’ experience and a way to work up an appetite for breakfast. I hope she is up, and joins me, as promised. It’s one thing being naked in the presence of maybe half a dozen people (essentially her, my and another family) within our urbanisation, another thing to be totally nude, a mile away from your clothing 🙂

It doesn’t bother me one jot, but I’ve suggested she can bring along a pareo for her public, public debut. I shall report back.

In the meantime, my glass of wine is calling!

Ella

With the boss becalmed in Spain due to internet issues I’ve been exploring, as I always do, new possibilities for naturism within Second Life.

I discovered Baggerloch (a German oriented sim?) which advertises itself as a gay naturist location.

I’ve pixellised an image from there because it’s a lot naughtier than the sort of thing we’d permit on SL Naturist. And some of those pose balls and animations are equally naughtier than you’d expect here. As you can see, it advertises itself as ‘only for men’ and ‘no women avatars’.

Well, that’s not going to stop me going there! 🙂

Nor should it anyone.

One of the things that irritates me in real life as well as Second Life is the very idea that I, as a red-blooded woman, am barred from anywhere. I’m not singling Baggerloch out for individual attention here, it’s a beautiful sin reminiscent of Canada, Scotland or Scandinavia and looks gorgeous.

I want to photograph and feature LGBT naturist sims in Second Life and for SLN to be able to report their existence and link onward to real life beaches which are gay-friendly. But the idea that women are barred (and once again let me reinforce the idea that this isn’t confined to Baggerloch, it has been a constant theme of gay sims since I started in SL) is wrong and it’s discriminatory.

Would the gay community accept any sim, naturist or otherwise, in SL putting up a sign that said ‘no gay avatars’? Of course they wouldn’t! And rightly so! So, just saying, it works both ways.

This is something that I think follows on from real life naturism. Some beaches, while not being able to enforce the theory, promote themselves as ‘gay naturist beaches’, the sub text being that they’re gay male naturist beaches. While it makes sense in some way, so that men aren’t making the error of hitting on heterosexual men on the beach, and of course all of us want to be with out own ‘tribe’ (I like to hang out with naturists in naturist locations too!)

Rant over. But just let me make it clear that I do expect to be photographing more LGBT naturist locations for SLN in the future and I don’t expect to be challenged about my avatar gender by anyone.

Back to Baggerloch. It’s beautiful, well worth a visit for its photogenic nature and, of course, if you’re a gay naturist avatar, a place to find like-minded souls (and the odd female naturist avatar, wandering abroad)

Susan

(Ella adds: With the 16th anniversary of SL coming up, and me present in it for almost 11 years of that, I recall the earlier days when the avatar population would band together to fight discrimination. Back then SL was a little bit more ‘Wild West’, sims like frontiers towns, where hate speech and discrimination was rife. It wasn’t really Linden Labs fault. Their utopia was in the development stage and they had to react to the manner in which the population dealt with certain issues. I do recall when a far-right British political party opened up a sim 10-11 years ago it wasn’t uncommon to be able to teleport into a neighbouring island to fins numerous avatars ‘griefing’ the far-right supporters, launching all manner of particle cannons over the island to make life on it intolerable. Eventually LL acted and barred them (or that’s my recollection). I agree with Susan’s premise; there should be no discrimination based on an avatar’s genitals. I think it’s enough for all sim builders to assume that avatars are smart enough to work out for themselves what sort of actions are likely to take place at a gay or lesbian or BDSM or Gorean sim without having it spelt out for them, or having to be pre-warned. We’re all adults in SL)

We’ve been in Spain since Thursday, our usual Naturist place and usual naturist week(s). Unfortunately the apartment has been ‘sin internet’ (no internet) since we arrived and it’s only this evening that we’ve managed to get the free wifi password to a beach bar’s internet.

I had planned to do my usual ‘postcards from Spain’ series, but I’ll have to see when the service provider gets internet up and running again (the entire apartment block is without it and this is Spain. Everything happens mañana.

I hadn’t planned on posting tomorrow anyway, as it’s St Juan’s night tonight and things are pretty wild here 🙂

Ella

I stumbled across a dance production in Argentina, wherein the entire cast get naked for an elongated period of time towards the end of the show. Not naturist, of course, but I think exposure to artiistic nudity somethimes does play a role in people embracing their own body acceptance.

Avatar Julie replicates the cast’s dress code in SL, above and below. Following the youtube video at the top of the page should allow you to pursue links to learn more about the production..

Pookes

If the temperature isn’t crawling up to the low teens, it’s raining here in the UK. Constantly!

Summer is nowhere to be seen. It’s miserable!

Music festivals washed out. Many outdoor events cancelled. And no sign of summer on the horizon. Susan, out here in her Wellington boots, pretty much sums up the weather in the UK right now. At least some naturists are embracing their moment out in the downpours!

Ella

As I’ve already reported, we have a new home base.

Beneath us lies Coffee Diva, a cafe on the Eden Kittiwake sim,  and we’ve already made friends with manageress Julie.

The smell of freshly ground coffee rises up in the morning, and once she gets the croissants warmed up….mmmmm….not much work done before 11!

When I started this blog I reported my own initiation into naturism, a summer waitressing at Cap D’Adge in France. The owner’s mantra was ‘when dealing with food, not in the nude’, so we had to be dressed under blazing sun all day long. We once made a request to at least go topless, but the owner refused (on safety grounds and hygiene grounds). With barely a break from 8am to 8pm, the sweat rolled off us, and we took to bringing and changing into a fresh T shirt half way through the day.

It looks like Julie adopts a similar, but slightly more relaxed, dress code. If you’re anywhere near Eden Kittiwake, tie up your boat and grab some coffee in the company of the lovely Julie (and the rest of us working upstairs all have barista experience at some time in our past, if she’s not there 😉 )

Nude eating and drinking are becoming ‘a thing’.

I hope to do a round up of places where naked dining is now possible, some time in the future.

Ella

I cannot say thanks enough to Brenda Hoisin, co-owner of Eden Naturopolis, for providing us with new office space at the Eden estate! Thank you, thank you, and thank you again, Brenda!

Yes, we’re upstairs at a building on the Eden Kittiwake sim, and not only that, there’s a cafe downstairs which means we can retire the now ancient SLN coffee machine and simply nip downstairs for a coffee.

And in fact that’s what Susie and I are doing in the photo above. Although I’m not sure we should need to be availing of too many of their delicious buns, otherwise we won’t even be capable of making the stairs!

In celebration, I assembled the staff in the office and here you can see…a stranger 😉 , Pookes, myself and Susie (from L-R) in the process of filling our bookshelves with naturist textbooks, and getting down to work.

My next post will properly introduce that ‘stranger’ to you 🙂 with another development for SLN!

In the meantime, thank you, Brenda, for being a wonderful and loyal friend to SLN!

Ella