REPORT OF THE FEN-EUNAT-INF SOUTH EUROPEAN FAMILY MEETING 2011 HELD IN ARNAOUTCHOT, FRANCE.
From Saturday 27th August to Sunday 4th September the European Family Meeting took place. This 2nd South European Family meeting was organised by the Spanish Federation (FEN) for all the European Federations, and it was approved at the European Naturist Annual Meeting which took place in Sweden in May 2011. This event hopes to have a financial support of around 3000€ from the European budget as agreed.
The meeting commenced with a welcome cocktail, offered by Arna, which turned out to be a real dinner, with no more limits than the time limits (it lasted two hours). The owner of Arna, Jean-Philippe Pavie, and the FEN president, Ismael Rodrigo, amongst others, addressed the guests who attended this first event of the program. The participants were also offered by Arna lots of gifts: shoulder bags, ballpoint pens, flashlights, bookmarks, stickers, etc; offered by BN, BN Magazine;
offered by FFN, Naturisme; offered by Suzanne Piper, Naturist Life, etc, etc. This first night ended at the discotheque which continued until 2 o’clock in the morning.
The weather smiled on us for all of the week, except during some nights and on the last day. Starting from the Aqua-gym in the morning, at the indoor swimming pool, or with a wonderful excursion with José Luis, our Bird-Watching expert, around the Arna dunes, beach and pine woods; attending the numerous workshops (Pearls, 3D Cards, Painting of T-shirts, leather, Mosaic,…), practicing Archery (and winning some medals), walking in the forest (alone or with the organisation), and, of course, lying out on the wonderful beach with the necessary incursions in the sea to cool down in the strong sun.
Despite the enormity of Arna it was fully booked which made it difficult to put together all the people interested in joining our meeting. However, as you can see in the meeting picture, we were very near to achieving this goal when, on Tuesday, nearly 400 people (from the approx 500 who attended the meeting) took part in these historical pictures on the beach. Our intention was to put together another big picture with the T-shits made to promote this meeting, but the number of T-shirts was not sufficient for all the participants (FEN, FFN, BN, FPN, DFK, NFN, SNU-UNS).
Another activity which was a great success was the intensive Course of Manual Massage and Reflexology. The three planed classes on each subject became 4 classes of one and half hours. Manel, our masseur, was very generous with his time, and also participated in a TV interview together with the Spanish president, Ismael Rodrigo, and INF Vice-president, Mick Ayers, for “Naturisme TV”:
Marian Damen, the International Officer of British Naturism, delighted us with a speech about “Naturism in the UK”, with a lot of details about each club. This address was attending by Suzanne, editor of the British Naturist Life magazine. Marian also tried to teach us about the traditional custom of Morris Dancing, on the beach.
Most nights ended with about two hours of Ballroom Dancing, with our teachers José & Charo and their helpers, each time held inside the restaurant to avoid any kind of disturbance from noise.
The meeting finished with the projection of photographs taken during the family holiday. Johnny Calviño, from Venezuela, was awarded the first prize: a weekend with his family in Arna.
See you next year at ?… we hope so!
NOTE: The pictures included in this article, as well as the article itself, can be published in magazines belonging to the federations or member clubs of the INF-FNI. Publishing in any other naturist magazines is only with the written permission of the FEN (Spanish Naturist Federation).
If you require higher quality pictures, please contact the FEN via e-mail (fen@naturismo.org)
