Bucket list

Another One of the Bucket List: First Visit to a Nude Beach in Spain

By James

A quiet main street greeted me as I got off the bus on a Saturday morning in February. The bus that carried on my two and a half hour trip from Seville disappeared indifferently around the corner on route for Ayamonte, the end of the line. Nearing ten o’clock in the morning, the sea haze and clouds tried their best to block out the sun and keep the temperature cool. Being approximately 10°C at that time it was good thing I was still wearing my jacket. Walking from the bus stop to the nearby seashore, I made my way through a wide deserted promenade – this was first view seaside town of La Antilla.

After a breakfast of tostadas and coffee, I promptly made my way down the beach – Playa La Antilla. It had been about a month since I arrived in Seville and I was finally about to do what I promised myself I would do when I first touched down on Spanish soil – go full on naturist on one of Spain’s beaches. I have done naturist before in Ireland for sure, but never in a foreign country, so this was a big deal for me personally. Since this was a month overdue, I was rearing to go.

But first I had to leave the textile dominant Playa La Antilla and head directly west along the narrow spit of sand better known as Punta Nueva. And that meant encountering my worrying sign – crowds of textiles on their morning walk on the beach. Was this what it was going to be like the whole way?

Thankfully, as the sun gradually burned away at the clouds overhead and made them vanish, so too did the throng of textile morning walkers gradually dissipate.

An hour or so into the walk I had reached the dividing line between Textile and Naturist zones. There were a lot of textiles about, but by the time 12 o’clock had come, and people had got their morning walks in, the beach was largely deserted. It was then I took my cue, and liberated my body from its prison.

At this point I had a vast expanse of beach before and after me, my only company the solitary speck of a person over the horizon who you would never meet. The vast never-ending deep blue of the sky above only added to the enormity of my surroundings.  I took the opportunity to explore the adjacent dunes and take several swims to cool myself down, I dried myself off simply by walking under the beating sun above me, no towel required. The less fabric required in a place like this better.

Around this stage of my trek the temperature must have been in the low to mid-twenties degrees Celsius. Judging by the heat and sweat pumping out of me I was not going to argue otherwise. To our Irish readers, this is a typical February temperature in Spain.

I continued my walk close to the end of Punta Nueva before heading back to base. As sun beat its radiance down upon my naked body I was glad in the knowledge that my rather large tan line, borne of the Irish winter, had something to think about.

By the time I arrived back at the dividing line between the textile and nudist sections of Punta Nueva at 5 o’clock, I finally encountered other fellow naturists, even if they only numbered in the half dozen. Not seeking to waste this opportunity, I decided on the spur of the moment to add to their number and spent the next hour sunbathing nude, tossing and turning periodically to ensure both sides were properly covered by the Spanish rays. It was a nice end to an otherwise solitary day.

Of the approximately twelve miles round trip on Punta Nueva, I estimate I spent eight of those miles naked – and barefoot. Aside from the first few minutes after stripping off, I was almost oblivious to the fact that I was nude throughout that time. 

Arriving back at La Antilla, I had a dinner of Solomillo and Potatoes over a copa of Rioja, watching the same sun that graced my bare skin descend over the horizon on the nearby Algarve coast of Portugal. And I sat there thinking to myself at the end of this first-time experience – what other naturist beaches has this part of Spain to offer?