Naturists are surprisingly coy. None of those interviewed wanted to be fully identified.

“We don’t want to offend anybody,” says Margaret, who runs a naturist holiday retreat with husband John in the Halstead area.

Naturism has been misconstrued in some quarters as being a dirty word.

But naturists stress there is nothing sexual about their nudity.

What they see is the person, rather than the body, which makes them more sociable and interested in people’s personalities than figures. And it means they have less worries about body image, and they are probably generally healthier and happier than those of us who are worried about our looks.

Full story in this week's paper.