Naturist (almost) visit to the abandoned village of Drave

Last saturday I decided to walk a little further my usual spot. I went to a walk from a small village on the mountains just south of Porto called “Regoufa” to an abandoned village called “Drave”. To get to the first village it takes 1,5 hours by car. After, you have to walk a little more 3km through the mountains to reach the final destination.

I did not plan to make a naturist walk, but since I have known that “Drave” is abandoned for more than a century and there is no electricity, mobile phones connections and water supply, maybe would have much people in the trail, so I could make it naked.

The first leg of the trail I was behind a group that I have been trailing most of the car travel, cause they were going in two cars for the exact destination. I was hoping they were going elsewhere, but they decided to make the same trail… So, the climbing part is a little hard until you get a point that you can see most of the path.

I have waited them to take a left turn on the top of the first mount to take my clothes off. When i reached the top, I saw that another group was starting down below and they can easily see that I was walking naked, so I put on my shorts and started walking faster. Occasionally I passed the first group but I could not take much distance to re-start my naked walk. Only at few metres from the village, I saw that the path was clean and mostly secluded from the view behind and from the village, so I took my shorts off again. Just to put them on again in a few metres.

When I entered the village, it was superpopullated with a national gatherings of boys scouts groups. So, I could’nt be naked as planned. The village was build in the joining point of two mountain peaks, they were built all in chalkboard stones, with the exception of the church in white. In the middle of the village there is a river that descends from the mount and forms many natural ponds on its way. Unfortunately the bigger one was crowded by young scouts and other people, so it will be hard to have my deserved skinny diping.

So I decided to walk a little through the village and then walked up along in the river. After some time I found a perfect spot for my skinny diping. I took my clothes off, and took a dive in the secluded pool. Ate my sandwich and some fruits and refill my bottle of water with the pure water from the river.

I was in my second skinny diping when, I heard some noise. When I look above I saw a man reaching my point with no time to put my shorts on. He was with his girlfriend and It seemed they decided to climb along the river. When I saw them I stood up and said something like “sorry for being naked, but it is too hot”. They don´t care about it and while I tried to cover myself she asked me what was there up along the river, as I was not nude. I answered and they proceeded with no problems.

I stayed a little further, explored the down the river, took more dips (but with my shorts on cause the placed was crowded) and eventually met the group I passed along the way bathing (clothed) in one of the lower swimming holes along the river.

Later, I decided to go back to the original village to take my car and return to Porto. I decided to do it before 3:30 pm so it was very hard to bump into people that would be coming to the village at that time, and it was a little early for the people still in the village to start the pilgrimage back to the bigger village. Maybe I could return naked…

And it was like this. I walked back most of the 3km in a naked walk. Only met people about 100 m from my destination point.  I could see them before they saw me, so I could manage to put my shorts on before passing them.

It was a great time.