Naked Rambler walks free from prison - and walks away nude

[Stu2630]

^^ When he was incarcerated in Barlinnie Prison and Perth Prison, Stephen Gough endured several cycles of being immediately arrested upon leaving prison nude after serving his sentence. The authorities eventually grew tired of that game and just let him go. The authorities in Fife have opted to hide behind the logic that they can't arrest him unless there has been a complaint. The logic is specious as you can always find someone who will claim to be offended by just about anything.

The authorities in Scotland just want rid of him - they want him to make it to the English border and off their hands! If you read most of the Scottish press, you will see that he is regarded as an irritating "eccentric" (nutcase) who has cost them a lot of money and has no business being in Scotland. At some point, he will eventually make it home and then he will claim some kind of "victory" and delude himself that he is a Mandela figure who has taken on and defeated the authorities. In reality, he has just made himself a figure of derision, and people walking the streets naked will be just as much at risk of being arrested as they always were.

Sanslines

Bingo! This is why we need one million naked ramblers roaming all over Scotland. Let's see how the authorities deal with imprisioning one million naked ramblers.

Good luck with finding one million people who are willing to do that in Scotland!

Stu

[NakedGary]

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/fe...bler-1-2564879

Video of Stills

By PETER ROSS
Published on Sunday 7 October 2012 00:00

OUR reporter spends 24 hours on the road – and in a tent – with Stephen Gough as he enjoys his freedom and walks towards the border with England

AT 9.45 yesterday morning, after a leisurely breakfast of porridge and sugarless tea, Prisoner 81590, also known as Stephen Gough, better known as the Naked Rambler, was getting undressed to go to work.

In a field just off the B7026, not far from Penicuik, the 53-year-old bent to tie his hiking boots and one of his bare knees sank into the damp ground. He stood and put on his floppy green hat and his heavy rucksack. His lean body was pale after more than six years of prison, and dotted with insect bites after a day out of it. His pubic hair is dark, his chest hair white. Varicose veins made a river delta of the back of his calves. “Right,” he said, squinting at the rising sun, “if I can do 20 miles today, that’ll be good.”

How do I know? We spent the night together. On Friday evening, we found a spot in a field, sheltered by a fallen fir, with incredible views towards Salisbury Crags. Now that he was no longer walking in public, Gough got dressed, pulling on a fleece and green trousers. Anyway, the midges were bothering him. He has a two-man tent and offered to let me lodge beside him. “As long,” he joked, “as you don’t get naked.” There was no chance of that.

Released early Friday from Saughton Prison in Edinburgh, he walked naked out the gates and headed for the Pentland hills, south of the city. Since 2006, he has spent most of his time in custody in Scotland, usually being arrested very soon after release. During his court appearances he refuses to wear clothes, and refuses to wear them in prison, which has meant that he is kept in segregation from the other prisoners. When he took exercise in the yard in Saughton, he was kept hidden from the overlooking windows by a wooden frame on wheels known as the Rambler Scrambler.

His most recent conviction for breach of the peace came after he was arrested in Dunfermline, three days after leaving Perth prison. His intention is to walk naked home to Eastleigh, near Southampton, to see his family and live naked in the community. He suspects that if he can just get over the Border, English police will treat him with greater lenience.

I met him in the Midlothian village of Auchendinny. He had been in the hills all day but was now back on the roads, eating an apple like the Biblical Adam. A 6ft 3in former marine, he walks fast, a great yomping lope, never slowing even as traffic slows and peeps at the sight of him. A man in a white van shouted “Get your f***ing clothes on!” but Gough ignored him. Road workers in hard yellow hats asked him to stop so they could get have their photos taken with him. He smiled when they told him to enjoy his freedom. “Yeah,” he said, “as long as it lasts.”

The Naked Rambler isn’t rambling alone. There is a film crew making a documentary about him, and he is also accompanied by members of the public impressed by his cause. One, George Cavanagh, a 53-year-old courier from Musselburgh, has created a board game based on Gough’s travels. Another of his supporters, John Hamilton, a retired civil servant, though not a naked one (he is wearing an anorak) is using satnav on his phone to find a suitable route. Hamilton met Gough following his release from Perth prison. “I believe the Scottish system has been totally unjust to him,” Hamilton says. “It’s not illegal to be naked. His being sent to prison is an embarrassment for Scotland.”

Hamilton does feel, though, as do many people, that Gough would do himself a favour if he just put on some clothes, went home, re-established contact with his teenage children and saw his elderly mother for the first time in years. There is a growing sense that Gough’s story has gone from comic to tragic and that he is ruining his life for the sake of a point about civil liberties which he made long ago.

The truth is, though, that it’s hard to maintain a feeling of pity for Gough when you are walking along at the side of him, close enough to smell his musky sweat, and listening as he orates – there is no other word – on personal freedom. He does not come across as a pitiful figure. He says his walk is a mixture of public statement and inner journey. He says that he is the word made flesh. He considers this to be his job. “If you compromise your truth,” he insists, “you compromise yourself.”

In the early evening, we turned off the road, looking for a place to camp. Gough negotiated a barbed-wire fence. “I’ve never snagged meself on one of these yet,” he said, stepping over, “and that record still stands.”

The night was freezing. We built a fire and watched the stars. We drank some whisky. “This,” he said, “is the opposite of prison.” Not seeing his kids is hard, he said, but he feels he is setting them an example of how to live a life of integrity. He dislikes the idea that anyone would believe he was insane, and said that even if he had to spend the rest of his life in prison he wouldn’t give up what he is doing. He explained the roots of his naked rambling go back to a walk he took when living in Vancouver and burst into tears at the epiphanic realisation that human beings are essentially good; how, then, he argues, can the body be bad?

He phoned Mel, his ex-girlfriend with whom he once walked naked from Land’s End to John O’Groats. He phoned his mother, who is in her eighties and seems to be hard of hearing. “No,” he corrected her, “I’m not in Kent, I’m in a tent.” He belched and farted with gusto. He sniffed his socks. He snored.

Yesterday morning, after breakfast, as the sheep looked on, Gough hit the road again. He was making for the Borders village of Walkerburn, via Peebles. We walked along the A701 and, in Howgate, a young woman called Regan Drew, walking two poodles, blushed as he passed. “Is this actually happening?” she asked.

Gough passed the village hall, where a bake sale was being held. He waved to the middle-aged ladies peering through the windows. “My goodness, that was a vision to behold,” said Jan Stewart. Was she offended? “Oh, God, no. Not at all!”
“I’m just damned disappointed,” said Cheryl Wilkinson, “that I didn’t have my glasses on.”
I left Gough just outside Leadburn, but couldn’t resist asking, one last time, about the purpose of his journey. He had talked quite a lot about religion. Is this, then, some sort of pilgrimage? The Naked Rambler mulled this over. “But I’m not going anywhere am I?” Then he rubbed his beard and reconsidered. “Well,” he said. “I suppose I’m going to my mum’s.”

Related Articles

• Walker vows ambition is to keep naked
  
  AFTER a detour of 1,400 miles, an unscheduled interruption of 19 days, a night in a psychiatric hospital and an appearance before English magistrates, the naked rambler trudging from Land’s End to John o’Groats is back in Scotland again.
  
  http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/fe...bler-1-2564879

[Mosquito_Bait]

^^

...
Gough passed the village hall, where a bake sale was being held. He waved to the middle-aged ladies peering through the windows. “My goodness, that was a vision to behold,” said Jan Stewart. Was she offended? “Oh, God, no. Not at all!”
“I’m just damned disappointed,” said Cheryl Wilkinson, “that I didn’t have my glasses on.”
...

Thanks for posting! I love the above snip. I think it represents the attitude of the majority of the population, which the law is slowly beginning to recognize.

[Sanslines]

Thanks for the really nice article Gary. This kind of article really humanizes the rambler and shows that he is just a harmless man who is doing nothing more that walking around naked. The comments from the ladies show that he is not out to terrorize or threaten anyone as they enjoyed a chuckle from a harmless middle aged man just passing by.

[Skinview]

The world needs more people like Stephen Gough.

[Stu2630]

Gough is an egotistical and arrogant fool - and I think he has caused damage to naturism rather than helped it.

His behaviour has been contrary to most existing advice given to nudists by bodies like AANR and British Naturism.

• He has set out to confront people (textiles) with his nakedness
• He has defied the police and the courts

He has cost the public a huge sum in policing, lawyers, courts and imprisonment. Every mouthful of food he has put in his belly has come from the taxes of ordinary Scottish people while contributing nothing and, meanwhile, the English taxpayer has had to pay to keep his wife and his children in state benefits. He is an acute embarrassment to his family and he has hugely let down his very elderly and infirm mother. He has also upset and alarmed many members of the public with his antics and he now attracts a great deal of derision from the public - and that reflects upon responsible naturists.

He has travelled north to another country intent upon forcing the authorities to change their own laws. That is no better than a Muslim extremist coming to the US and demanding American women stop exposing their faces - would you tolerate that?

This time, he might make it home - or he might not. When he does eventually get home, he will have achieved nothing. If he is shown any latitude, it will be because they think he is a nutcase and so not really responsible for his behaviour and other members of the public will wonder how many other such fruitcakes there are to be found among the ranks of naturists.

Gough is deluded. He sees himself as some kind of Mandela figure, but his "cause" can not compare. There are no winners in his case - everyone involved is a loser, especially Stephen Gough, his family, and the reputation of naturism.

Stu

[nimrod]

He has travelled north to another country intent upon forcing the authorities to change their own laws. That is no better than a Muslim extremist coming to the US and demanding American women stop exposing their faces - would you tolerate that?

What an absurd comparison. Even if his intent was to change the laws, the difference between the two are still obvious. Trying to change laws for more rights vs. laws that take them away, I definitely can see how one is better then the other. And I do not see him trying or even wanting to force others to go nude.

[Stu2630]

Trying to change laws for more rights vs. laws that take them away,

I think people have a right to use public places without having to encounter what they find obscene and/or distressing, or sights they really don't want their children to see.

And I do not see him trying or even wanting to force others to go nude.

No, but he has been doing his best to force as many people as possible get a view of his penis, whether they like it or not.

Stu

[Mosquito_Bait]

...
He has cost the public a huge sum in policing, lawyers, courts and imprisonment. Every mouthful of food he has put in his belly has come from the taxes of ordinary Scottish people while contributing nothing and, meanwhile, the English taxpayer has had to pay to keep his wife and his children in state benefits. He is an acute embarrassment to his family and he has hugely let down his very elderly and infirm mother. He has also upset and alarmed many members of the public with his antics and he now attracts a great deal of derision from the public - and that reflects upon responsible naturists.
...

No. It is the government authorities who have made the decision to waste public funds with their pointless prosecution of Stephen Gough.

[nimrod]

I think people have a right to use public places without having to encounter what they find obscene and/or distressing, or sights they really don't want their children to see.

People will encounter things they find obscene and/or distressing, it happens no matter how many laws that they pass against it offences are still there. Being offended is a choice and learned behaviour, it can be un-learned.

No, but he has been doing his best to force as many people as possible get a view of his penis, whether they like it or not.

What a bunch of crap, he is not forcing anyone to look at his penis, he is not going up to people grabbing their heads and forcing it into his crotch. He is walking, seeing his penis is incidental.