Nakedwill News is up. A short update from the road.

Nakedwill News is up. A short update from the road.

There's a new page on the site. It's called Nakedwill News, and it does one plain job: tell you what's happening without making you dig through five different apps to find out.

I should have built it a year ago. I kept telling myself the blog was enough, that anyone who cared would find the posts eventually. But a blog is where I think out loud, and thinking out loud isn't the same as telling people where I'll be next week or why a photo series got delayed by three weeks of rain. So here it is. A noticeboard by the gate.

Why a separate news page

Feeds move fast and forget quickly. A post about a beach clean-up, a change to how I run the community comments, an announcement that a shoot is happening — all of it sinks out of sight in about two days. I've had people message me asking about things I definitely announced, and they weren't wrong to miss it. It just wasn't there anymore.

News is where the important bits stay in order. Short entries, dated, no algorithm deciding who deserves to see them. If something changes about how the community works, it goes there first. If a trip gets cancelled, it goes there first. If I'm somewhere with bad signal for a week, that goes there too, before I leave.

Notes from the road

I've been travelling for the better part of a month, mostly in a small rented cabin near the coast with a wood stove that takes twenty minutes to stop smoking and a tap that runs cold for the first minute of every morning.

The first morning here I walked down to the water before anyone else was awake. It was six degrees, maybe less, and the whole thing felt like a bad idea. I stood at the edge for a while doing what I always do — negotiating. Then I stopped negotiating and went in.

The first minute is the hardest minute. That's not a metaphor or a lesson, it's just true. After that the body stops arguing and starts paying attention. I've written before about how being naked outside resets something in me, and I still can't explain it any better than that. Not brave. Not spiritual. Just quieter in the head than I usually am.

A few days later I found a stretch of coast I'd read about online, with a small naturist section at the far end. The access road was rough, there were no facilities at all, and the only other person there was a man in his sixties reading a paperback in a folding chair who nodded at me and went back to his book. That's the whole story. Nothing happened. It was one of the best afternoons of the trip.

The beach with the wrong sign

Here's the part worth repeating, because it comes up in my inbox constantly.

At the entrance to that same beach there were two signs. The first, official-looking and laminated, said no nudity. The second, weathered and bolted to a fence post about fifteen metres further along, pointed to the naturist area with a hand-drawn arrow. Contradictory, confusing, and completely normal — local rules are often written in layers by people who never read each other's work.

I followed the arrow, kept my distance from anyone who hadn't asked for company, and stayed only where it was clearly permitted. But I want to be honest about the boring part: before I got out of the car I checked the local council website, then checked it again, then asked in a forum that tracks these places. Twenty minutes of admin for an afternoon of swimming. That's the deal.

I'd rather say it plainly than make it sound romantic. If you're new to outdoor naturism, the rules matter more than the feeling. Find out what's legal where you are. Read the signs, even the badly written ones. Stay away from anyone who looks uncomfortable. Ask before you photograph anything, including the landscape if people are in it. Consent isn't paperwork, it's just being a decent person on a beach.

What the trip keeps teaching me

Being naked outdoors hasn't made me braver. If anything it's made me more ordinary. I bump into things. I get cold. I misjudge the tide and walk back along the cliff path too fast with my sandals in my hand.

What it has changed is how much time I spend thinking about how I look. On a beach, surrounded by people of every age and shape, none of whom are watching, the question stops mattering. There's no mirror to check and nobody to perform for. My shoulders drop about an inch and stay there.

Some of that is what I want the blog to keep exploring, and some of it is what the new photo work is about. I've been shooting with a small group of people who each wrote me a page about how they wanted to be seen, and then we went and made pictures that matched what they wrote. No poses borrowed from anywhere. Consent written down and read aloud before a shutter clicked. That series is taking longer than I planned, and I think the extra time is right.

What's coming next

A few things on the near horizon: a practical piece on first-time naturist etiquette, written for people who genuinely don't know whether to bring a towel; the photo series above, once everyone has seen the edits and said yes; and a longer essay about mirrors and how strange it is to own a body you've been taught to look at from the outside.

The news page will have dates for all of it, plus travel notes when I'm somewhere worth mentioning. If a meet-up ever happens, it'll be listed there with a venue, a legal location, and clear ground rules — nothing organised on a whim, nothing that puts anyone in an awkward position.

Come say hello

If you've been reading quietly for a while, this is a good moment to say something. Tell me what you'd want more of: beginner questions, body image, the photography process, or the rambling travel notes. I read everything, even when I'm slow to reply from a cabin with one bar of signal.

Thank you for being here. Truly. Every message makes this feel less like a project I'm doing alone in a room and more like a community with a shared idea of what nakedness can mean.

More soon, from wherever the road goes next.

— Will