My first naturist experience – Mar Bella Beach, Barcelona

Before my very first naturist experience, I often wondered what it was that made people want to shed their clothes, sometimes in front of family and friends and other times in front of complete strangers. But I always felt that it was something I wouldn’t feel comfortable with doing myself, despite my curiosity. When I was young, I was tall and skinny and after I completed college, I was overweight. This resulted in me being very reluctant to go to beaches and swimming pools. I even opted out of swimming lessons while in school because of this.

Many years later, during a typical Irish summer, cold and wet I decided to take my girlfriend on a sun holiday to Spain. She was from Asia and was feeling very cold with the Irish summer. We decided on Barcelona as the destination. The temperatures were above 26 degrees Celsius while we were there – too hot for me but comfortable for my girlfriend.

For the first two days, we did a lot of sightseeing. On the second day we decided to walk back to the hotel along the footpath by the beach. At one point, the footpath and beach became separated by a green area and after a short distance, the path and beach met again and this is where I came across my first naturist beach. As I found out later, it was Mar Bella Beach and as we walked by, I was surprised to see a naked couple showering together. I did think to myself how natural it looked and with the weather being so hot, it made sense to sunbathe and swim naked, I was curious to find out more. My girlfriend seemed surprised to see naked people on view like that and judging by her reaction I could sense that it wasn’t something she would be interested in experiencing.

The next day, my girlfriend wanted to go shopping so I took the opportunity to go back to Mar Bella Beach. I felt being on holiday in a foreign country was the perfect opportunity for me to eventually put my curiosity to bed. As I got closer to the beach and could see fully naked people in the distance, I became nervous, the typical things that goes through your head for anyone exploring naturism for the first time. There was a huge mix of people at the beach, lots of families, groups of teens, some single males and females covering a full range of the age spectrum.

Most of the people seemed to be setting up close to the water. I found a spot not too close to anyone as I didn’t want to infringe. I placed my towel on the sand and sat down for a moment to compose myself. Nobody was looking at me, everything seemed so wonderfully natural and normal, children running in and out of the water, some people swimming while others took a stroll along the beach with the remaining people bathing in the glorious sunshine – the only thing different to being at a beach back home was that everyone was naked.

So I started removing my clothes and lay face down on my towel. I’ll never forget the feeling as the warm gentle breeze brushed over my skin from head to toe without any detours from wearing clothes. This feeling was so liberating, after 10 seconds everything felt so normal. Very soon another young couple set up base just to my right and another woman to my left. The one thing that amazed me so much was how relaxed I soon became and all my body image fears were quickly vanishing. After about 10 minutes, I turned over and lay back on my towel, I no longer had any fears or worries.

As the sun continued to shine, my naked body needed to cool down. I got up and walked into the sea where I began swimming for about 10 minutes. I can still remember the amazing feeling of swimming without the hindrance of swimming shorts. My legs felt so free as I kicked and swam in the water.

I was amazed by how fast the time past while I was in Mar Bella Beach. It soon was time to go back to the hotel to meet my girlfriend for dinner. I felt great as I walked back to the hotel, proud of what I had just done and I had a tingling feeling inside me that wanted to try it again, very soon.