What’s the right naturist campsite for you?

“So… we went to a naturist campsite, but we don’t think it was something for us”. Said no one ever. At least, that’s what we like to believe, but it isn’t always true. Although most just wish they discovered this a few centuries earlier, sometimes we meet people who gave naked camping a try and did not enjoy it.

Inappropriate behaviour can play a big role in this. We have friends who once were in the south of France and decided to give naturism a shot at Cap d’Agde. They walked the beach and… let’s just say it took us a while to convince them that the things they saw are really not common at most other naturist places.

But other times, when we hear someone tell the story about how they didn’t enjoy their first naturist experience, we immediately know that it’s just because they picked the wrong place. The wrong place for them.

Imagine you’re planning a vacation in Spain for the first time. You don’t know much about travelling, but you’ve seen a documentary on National Geographic that showed the endless empty beaches, the natural settings and the small local restaurants serving paella. So you book a hotel and end up in one of those cheap all-inclusive resorts full of guests who are drunk by noon and turn off their music at 5 am, but not before they put down their towels on a poolside chair.

The first naturist campsite we ever visited wasn’t much larger than 15 pitches and part of a larger textile domain. It was just camping spots and a sanitary block. At the time, it was the only naturist campsite we knew, and in our ignorance it was what naturist camping in general looked like. We didn’t know any better. We loved it, but probably just because the social nudity thing was still bright, new and exciting.

We went back another time, and then a third time. And then we were on holiday in Croatia and decided to try a naturist campground there. We could not believe our eyes. Our idea of a naturist vacation turned from sharing a small patch of grass with a few elderly Dutch couples to being on a huge domain with thousands of naked people of all ages, with bars and restaurants and volleyball and a beach and whatnot.

After getting a taste of the really big naked domains, it was hard to go back to something smaller. We were in our late twenties, doing the corporate job, traffic jam-infused, work-hard-play-hard thing. Although we could enjoy a few hours naked in the sun reading a book, the endless entertainment that came with these large campgrounds was much more attractive.

Even now that we’re a few years older and left the rat race behind us for a while, we can still get attracted to large places where something is always going on. From time to time. But we can equally desire a small spot in nature where nothing happens unless we make it happen.

Some people go to the same campsite vacation after vacation, year after year, and that is totally fine. They just have a very fixed idea of what some time away looks like. For us, it’s much dependent on how we feel and what we need. Do we need to be entertained? Or do we want solitude instead?

For a long time, our idea of social nudity was just the fact that you are naked among other naked people. It was like this at the small campsite in Luxembourg, where we didn’t exchange more than a few formalities when we passed by another guest on our way to the toilet. And it was the same at the huge place in Croatia, where friendly smiles and nods appeared to be the only necessary communication.

This perception changed when we visited a naturist campsite in Italy that did communal dinners. Although we much enjoy cooking our own food when camping, as part of the experience, nobody says no to authentic Italian food.

That night of our first communal dinner, our naturist experience levelled up again. Conversations happen differently when everyone is naked. There’s no keeping up appearances or dressing for the occasion. It might be a cliché to say that people are more honest when they are nude, but it is a fact that there’s less measuring up. What you do or what your background is matters much less than who you are. It’s a reason, if not THE reason, why we kept going back to smaller places.

In big campgrounds, you may also connect to others, but mostly that doesn’t go further than the people camping next to you or those you end up next to at the bar. This too has its charm. Sometimes you don’t want to socialise or be dragged into a community. Sometimes we enjoy the anonymity that comes with a city and other times we like the social aspect of a small village.

Our discovery of “the naturist world” has largely been driven by the idea of “what else can we do naked?” We discovered social nudity in a Belgian sauna complex, a bit of research brought us to a campsite, then a beach, then a large campsite, then a campsite in a different country, a guesthouse, a hotel, a place in the woods, all the way to a yoga studio in downtown Manhattan or a remote island in Australia. We enjoyed social nudity and wanted to explore every single aspect of it.

But we also ran into our boundaries. Sometimes we felt that we didn’t really need to be naked. Or want to be naked. Sometimes this has to do with other people. Last week we ended up in a clothing-optional sauna complex in Lithuania where every other guest had chosen the bathing suit option. After nearly 10 years of being “professional naturists”, the discomfort was still pretty real. Other times it’s temperature-related, or depending on the activity, or just the simple feeling that you’d rather cover up.

Large campsites often work more with a clothing-optional standard. There are spaces where everyone needs to be nude, like the swimming pool, but everywhere else it’s okay to cover up. On one hand, this gives you the choice. On the other, it gives everyone else the choice as well. Which might then influence your own choice…

Smaller campsites or clubs tend to be more nude-only. This can feel like pressure if you’re in one of those “I’d rather not be nude” moments, but also gives you certainty about the general (un)dress code.

We always recommend to first read the reviews. These are the best barometer to help you set the right expectations. And they’re usually also great in helping you avoid Cap d’Agde situations.

But equally essential is to take some time to think about what you expect from this upcoming vacation. Do you want to be social or rather have time for yourself? Do you want solitude or be entertained? Do you want to be nude all the time and want everyone to be so as well? Or do you want to feel comfortable covering up and don’t mind others covering too?

If there’s one lesson we’d like you to take from this blog post, though, it’s that a not-so-good experience doesn’t have to mean that naturist vacations are not for you. You probably just haven’t found your spot yet. Write it off as a lesson learned and a guide in your search for your next naked vacation destination. Once you get there, you’ll wish you’d discovered it decades ago.