Guardian Naked Walking Fixation Rolls On...

The Guardian's 'silly season' obsession with 'the new craze' for naked hiking continues today with a Grauniad journalist kitted out only in '£115 Meindl Borneo boots' and a Tilley hat risking all in a 45-minute hike across Epping Forest.

Given that it apparently took him around 15 minutes to lace up his brand new boots - sourced from Field and Trek, so nice one F and T's PR agency - it's probably just as well he didn't have to wrestle with the complexities of doing up those complex zip flies or buttoning a shirt...

So what's the Grauniad's evidence that the clothes may have become 'passe in the walking world'? Erm, a scattering of naked rambler sightings, the bloke who was arrested in Cornwall as he attempted to walk from Land's End to John o'Groats in the nuddy and something called the 'Singles Outdoors Club'.

Not such a new craze anyway. We're reliably informed that one leading UK outdoors magazine planned an investigation into the phenomenom a couple of years back, which was promptly abandoned when the journalist researching the story took fright at the, ahem, nature of some of the rambling involved. Draw your own conclusions...

Incidentally, the male:female ratio in the 'Singles Outdoors Club' is apparently six to one in favour of the lads, so if you're a woman reading this, your nude rambling club needs you. You can find their web page here.

You can read Steve 'End to End' Gough's web pages here. Finally, for the Guardian story in its naked entirity, click here.