We Accidentally Reinvented the Naturist Camp

This Bank Holiday weekend has been something of an experiment for Naturism Wales. We knew that having both indoor and outdoor space would change what we could offer, but I’m not sure I fully appreciated just how much it would change the experience itself.

For years, camping has meant exactly what most of us imagine. A field, tents, motorhomes, chairs appearing in increasingly random formations and everyone keeping half an eye on the Welsh sky. Camping is wonderful when the weather cooperates. When it doesn’t, community can rapidly retreat behind canvas and caravan doors.

This weekend has felt different.

Having the freedom to move between the campsite and a substantial indoor space means the weather no longer dictates whether the social side of the weekend continues. People can wander inside, make themselves comfortable, talk, laugh, play games and then drift outside again when they fancy it. There is no particular point at which the “event” starts or finishes. People are simply living alongside one another.

And perhaps that is why it feels so naturally naturist.

Research into social connection increasingly suggests that it is the ordinary, repeated moments of contact that matter. The World Health Organization’s 2025 Commission on Social Connection reported that around one in six people worldwide experience loneliness, with social isolation and loneliness associated with more than 871,000 deaths annually. The WHO’s conclusion is not simply that people need more organised activities; we need environments that make human connection easier.

There is also good evidence for the value of shared outdoor experiences. Natural England’s People and Nature Survey consistently finds that spending time outdoors is strongly associated with wellbeing, while research involving almost 20,000 people found that those spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature were significantly more likely to report good health and high wellbeing than those who spent no time in nature.

What strikes me this weekend, though, is that we seem to have found an interesting middle ground.

We haven’t replaced camping with an indoor event. The tents, campers, fresh air and outdoor living are still fundamental to it. We have simply removed the requirement for everyone to choose between being outside and being together.

That sounds like a tiny distinction. In practice, it changes quite a lot.

Naturism has never made much sense to me when it is treated purely as an activity: arrive, undress, do the designated thing, dress and go home. Naturism is how we live. And living naturally includes the gloriously ordinary bits: making a cup of tea, sitting around talking nonsense, wandering between conversations, laughing with somebody you met an hour ago and occasionally doing absolutely nothing.

Perhaps this weekend is giving us a glimpse of what our future events could become. Not simply camps and not simply indoor gatherings, but temporary communities where people have enough freedom and space to create their own experience.

There will be plenty to learn from it. Some things will work brilliantly, others will undoubtedly need changing, and that is exactly what trying something new is supposed to reveal.

But sitting here during our first Bank Holiday weekend with this combination of indoor and outdoor space, I think we may have accidentally reinvented the naturist camp.

And perhaps the more interesting question is: what could we turn it into next?