Where is your perfect beach? Help us with a new book

Where is your perfect Beach

Where is your perfect beach? Contribute to a new beach guide

Nick Mayhew, co-author of Bare Beaches and Bare Britain, is currently researching a new guide-book on the world’s best nude beaches

It is a deadly serious question to me right now: where is your favourite naturist beach? We are writing the next edition of the well-known guide-book The World Guide to Nude Beaches and Resorts, and I want as many naturists as possible to tell us about their favourite places

With any luck our book will show the world the loveliest beaches, the greatest holiday resorts and the most beautiful naturist photographs in existence. No point in setting our sights too low.

To make the book as good as possible, we are calling on you to dig out your happiest memories and drop us a line.

If you’d like to send in some pictures, beach listings or resort descriptions, you can email to info@lifestyle-press.co.uk. Or post them to Lifestyle Press, PO Box 1087, Bristol BS48 3YD.

The deadline is 1 October, 2006. Pictures will be returned and if we print one of yours we will send you a free copy of the forthcoming 350-page World Guide, which will be published in spring, 2007.

Let me also tell you about my own personal number one spot.

Given that I’ve spent almost my entire adult life wandering around the world without any clothes, there are quite a few places to choose from. But I’ve put in the hours on this, and even the blissful naturist resorts of the French Atlantic coast come a very close second to my own naturist paradise.

I last visited the pretty little island of Formentera in 1995. It’s a short ferry ride from Ibiza, but stands a world apart from the busy party island. In fact, as you sit on the EasyJet flight to Ibiza you can amuse yourself by trying to work out who is going where. Well, it’s a short flight and I forgot to bring a book.

The lack of package holidays and big resorts on Formentera is no problem at all to naturist travellers. We are well served by a British-based travel firm, Astbury Formentera, which actively encourages naturist visitors and has more than 70 places to stay. The owner, John Astbury, has been arranging holidays there for 25 years and if anyone can recommend the best place for your particular interests, it’s him. There are even some bungalows actually on one naturist beach: you can live naked round the clock if you want.

A decade ago, Formentera had the most charming and laid-back attitude to nude bathing I’d ever experienced. Every beach, apart from a single busy town beach, was entirely free with the dress code. There must be around 30km of beach on Formentera, and to say that you are obliged to wear clothes on about 3km must give the island the highest ratio of naturist-friendly to textile beaches in the world. It’s certainly up there with Fuerteventura.

But even more than the naturist atmosphere, the astonishing colours of the sparkling blue sea on the south coast had imprinted themselves in my mind. I decided to pay the island another visit to see if it really was as good as I remembered. I have read some comments that Formentera has become less naturist-friendly in recent years, but I was delighted to discover that the opposite was true based on my two visits. They were at the same time of year, early June, which may make a difference.

The island is well supplied with beaches. By happy chance of nature, the beaches face almost exactly north, south, east and west – so if there’s a bit of a breeze you can easily pick a beach that has shelter from the wind. The long peninsula of beaches in the north is so narrow you can walk from coast to coast in about a minute, while you could drive the length of the island in about 40 minutes.

The sandy south coast beach, Migjorn, is my personal favourite. It stretches for at least five miles along a sparkling clear blue sea, dotted with beach bars and restaurants to break up the sunbathing and swimming. Even on a lovely day in June it was possible to find a fairly quiet spot along the shore. There were more women than men using the beach, probably because of a complete lack of hassle and gawpers on Migjorn: there are no real bushes or dunes for lurking behind.

To test just how naturist-friendly this beach is, I parked near one end of the beach, locked all my gear in the car, and walked right the way along Migjorn. I took nothing with me but a liberal coating of suntan oil, having buried the car key under a rock. There was no point when I felt uncomfortable – in fact there were other bare bathers in view for the entire three hours of my round trip.

There was one fairly noisy group of textile lads who made some comments as I passed, but there were naturists dotted nearby. I imagine their conversation must have been fairly restricted all day: “Hey chaps, that guy’s naked!” “Hey, so he is. Ha, ha! Actually, come to think of it, so are half the other people on this beach. Still, pretty amusing stuff, eh lads? I say, lads?”

On the opposite coast, facing north, is the little village of Es Calo, where I stayed in one of Astbury’s apartments. Es Calo has about half a kilometre of sandy bays, with some rocky headland that makes superb snorkelling territory, the best on the island according to John Astbury. You are never more than a few dozen yards from other users. If ever a beach set naturist beside textile, this is definitely it.

Both this year and 10 years ago there were more swimsuits than bare bottoms on view, being perhaps 30 per cent naturist. What struck me as different this time was that the textiles and naturists seemed completely oblivious to each other’s state of dress. A textile couple would set up right by a naturist group and vice-versa. I do remember being made to feel uncomfortable a decade ago by a few swimsuited men walking slowly along and taking in the view. I went there on four days this year and no one did the same.

In high season I could understand if the weight of numbers eventually made naturism uncomfortable for a few weeks, but certainly in June no one could have cared less. It’s a beautiful place where everyone just smiles and enjoys their own space, and I found it hard to drag myself away each day to research all the other beaches.

The west coast beaches of Es Cavallet and Playa de ses Illetes (‘beach of the islands’) also have naturism right the way along them, although naturists and textiles tend to keep to their own short sections here. The only west coast beach where I didn’t see naturism was at the beautiful bay of Cala Saona.

Ten years ago there was a tiny enclave of about half a dozen naturists gathered at the far end of Cala Saona beach. My girlfriend and I sat among them, but the presence of several hundred textiles on our right, some quite clearly fascinated by our lack of clothes, made it a pretty odd experience. Now naturists don’t bother and instead make use of numerous little bays just along the coast from here. It’s not exactly a loss to naturism and the area still has just as many bare bodies enjoying the scenery.

Finally, the east coast is very much more naturist in character. It’s another huge stretch of beaches and pretty bays called Llevant. There are many miles of golden sands to explore in your birthday-suit. I spent hours walking them all and I’d have to say, after such in-depth research, this beautiful little gem of an island is pretty much inch perfect.

Nick travelled with Astbury Formentera: www.formentera.co.uk, 01642-210163.