'Nature can be ruthless, but it doesn't judge you': Lancashire's naked forager hasn't 'mushroom' for clothes

When taking a stroll through the forests of Lancashire, the chances of running into a naked pair of mushroom pickers are low - but never zero.

Colin Unsworth, 56, has been foraging fungi for more than four decades, ever since his secondary school days in Adlington.

This year, he said Lancashire had seen a “bumper” crop of mushrooms of all shapes and sizes; brilliant news for his local foraging classes - only some of which are clothed.

For alongside being one of Lancashire’s leading mycologists, Colin Unsworth has spent years making headlines - and heads turn - as the UK’s best-known ‘naked forager’.

“Even more than mushrooms, it’s about connecting with nature,” Colin told the Lancashire Post.

“I was bullied a lot at school, so I spent a lot of time trying to escape and going off on my own. I used to go into the woods, and they felt like a much safer place, because nature can be ruthless, but it doesn’t judge you.

“Everybody experiences bullying at some point in their life, and everyone knows how damaging it can be. The world scrutinises you constantly, all the time, and no matter what, it doesn’t matter how hard you try, the more you fail.

“The more you put yourself in the spotlight, the more attention you get. It follows you and it binds you, and you can’t escape it. So there was part of me at the end of it all that just thought, ‘You know what? I’m just going to stand here stark naked, sod it’.”

What started as a response to poor circumstances would eventually spiral into a lifestyle for young Colin, who would eventually meet and fall in love with Sadie Tan - who he soon found was equally open-minded.

“My partner has a very similar story, and we met each other as very kindred souls. We go out on these naked forages, and we stand there and go, ‘This is us’.

“It’s the nature connection, you know? The sensory engagement from not wearing clothes from the top of your head to the tip of your toes, you’re engaging entirely with your senses; there’s a different feel to different places that you feel all over you, rather than just over the clothes. There’s something really authentic about it.

“In 2023, we did a series of forages to create a novelty charity calendar. When people came and joined in, they had some really wonderful stories, their personal journeys with their bodies and how coming at it from the angle of nature connection.

“There was a woman who had just had a mastectomy, and as we were all kind of stood there in our photoshoot, holding our staffs up to the sky, she said her taking that picture was like, ‘No, this is my body, it’s serving me, and I’m proud of it’. It was a real transformational thing.”

Just a year earlier, Colin, Sadie, London musician Hannah-Elizabeth Taoh, and Cheshire banker Neil Cox made headlines once again as the first people to ride from John O’Groats to Lands End completely in the nude.

The 837-mile journey - the longest cycling route in Britain - saw the group raise thousands for Mind and Rewilding Britain, and according to Colin was ”a huge thing”.

But despite raising £3,830 for charity, it’s a venture both Colin and Sadie are hesitant to repeat again, as they now fear their personal safety would be more at stake than ever before.

“I thought we’d have a trajectory of doing more and more stuff like this,” he said. “But the problem is, the world is becoming more and more intolerant. We’ve been totally put off being very public with stuff like this.

“We’ve had a couple of incidents where we’ve had people attacking us. We tried to go out on our bike, and we had somebody chase after us and kick us off, stuff like that.

“Loads and loads of people go, ‘Wow, that’s out of order’, but the problem is that for the minority of people who were negative about it in 2022, they might have just complained or shouted something at us. But now, they feel a bit more empowered to take action into their own hands. It can be scary.

“We’ve shied away from doing stuff because we don’t want to get attacked - it’s not worth the personal risk.”

As it stands, public nudity is completely legal in the UK.

According to official guidelines issued by the College of Policing, naturists in the UK have the right to be naked in public spaces, unless they cause - or intend to cause - harassment, alarm, and distress to others.

In situations where there is no sexual element to public nudity, and no element of distress to others, “it will not be appropriate to take any police action”.

“We’re very proud of the achievements we’ve made, and I think [the charity work] really spoke to a lot of people. There were so many people who saw the values behind it.

“I tend to find myself focusing more on the nature connection stuff now, and getting people into wild places and stuff like that.”

It’s been 15 years since Colin first started running his foraging classes in Lancashire.

In that time, he has written books, made charity calendars, and helped thousands of people across the county discover the joys of fungi foraging.

“Mushroom foraging is quite often framed in terms of its monetary value, like it’s free food,” Colin said. “How much of your diet is foraged food? How much money are you saving? Whose land are you walking on, do you have permission? It’s all framed in terms of money and ownership.

“But for me, there’s something else going on that’s way deeper: that nature connection.

“From an evolutionary point of view, we are Stone Age creatures, but we’re jut living in a technological era. This is where that disconnection is felt. But when you go out on a forage, you learn about things in nature, you understand the relationships between species, and when you forage your own food, you’re participating in that ecosystem.

“My favourite part is when I share some little snippet of information that’s really funky,” Colin said. “When you give those little snippets of information, it’s the spark that I see in someone’s eyes. That’s the thing that keeps me going.

“Engaging people with their natural habitat - that’s what does it for me.”