Naked Rambler to put on clothes as mother’s needs take priority
BRITAIN’S infamous “Naked Rambler” has called time on his crusade after more than a decade so that he take his elderly mother for strolls without fear that he would be arrested.
Former marine Stephen Gough, 57, has spent much of the last decade behind bars over his refusal to wear clothes after he first took to wandering naked in 2003.
But he is putting aside his staunch belief in trekking with his kit off so he can take care of his dementia-suffering mother Nora, 89, and take her for strolls without being arrested.
His vow comes just three months after his latest jail spell for public nudity.
In 2003, he hiked from Land’s End to John O’Groats wearing nothing but his rucksack, hat and boots.
He was locked up several times as he attempted a repeat trip two years later with then girlfriend Melanie Roberts.
The ex-marine said his mother had also suffered a stroke.
Stephen from Eastleigh, Hants, said: “At the moment, what’s appropriate is looking after my mum – she needs 24-hour care. If she wants to go for a wander, I’ll get dressed and go with her whatever time it is.
“Obviously I’m clothed when I’m doing all this – I’d get arrested if I wasn’t and then she’d have no one to look after her.
“She’s gradually getting worse. I need to be here. I had to respond to what was necessary.”
Activist Stephen first started walking the length of Britain in 2003, campaigning for freedom of all kinds.
The former lorry driver has been arrested a number of times and completed a number of stints in prison – mostly in solitary confinement due to his refusal to wear clothes.
In January, he was freed from jail after a stretch for breaching a no-nudity Asbo.
It was estimated that he spent a total of five years and three months in detention from May 2006 to July 2011.
In 2014, Gough lost a case at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in which he alleged his repeated arrest, prosecution, conviction and imprisonment for being naked in public and his treatment in detention violated his rights.
The court unanimously found there had been no violation of Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In one i ncident , he approached two police officers as he left Perth Prison naked. When he refused to put clothes on, he was sentenced to one year, nine months and 18 days in prison.