Stephen Gough, AKA the Naked Rambler, has finally been released from Perth prison after six years of near-constant, naked, incarceration. I interviewed him there in January, while he was serving his 17th conviction. It appeared that Gough and the Scottish legal system had unwittingly created the perfect legal quandary. How to release a naked man who is in prison for being naked?

Gough's imprisonment began in May 2006 when he stripped off on a flight from Southampton to Edinburgh. He was returning to Scotland to face charges connected to the second of his Land's-End-to-John-O'Groats naked rambles that had seen him make jovial appearances in the national press, and less jovial appearances in the docks of various Scottish magistrates' courts.

The mid-air strip (which in court was described as having little effect other than exciting an onboard hen party) earned Gough a four-month sentence for breach of the peace. Those four months have been extended over and over again as Gough has each time insisted on leaving prison without any clothing. The prison authorities notify the police, the police pick him up outside, he's charged with a further breach of the peace, taken to court to receive another sentence and sent back to jail.

It was clear when I interviewed him that he was never going to back down on his cause. I found him extremely likeable and highly persuasive. "What I'm doing isn't about me," he said. "I'm challenging society and it must be challenged because it's wrong." It was extreme naturism mixed with equally extreme stubbornness. Yet at a philosophical level Gough was persuasive. "We can either end up living a life that others expect of us or lives based on our own truth," he wrote to me afterwards. "The difference is the difference between living a conscious life or one that is unconscious. And that's the difference between living and not living."

In the months after, Gough and I exchanged a series of amicable letters. The difficulty of housing a naked prisoner had left him in virtual solitary confinment, and he was greatly enjoying the mail he had received as a result of the piece. "No offer of a wife or girlfriend yet though," he joked in one letter. Gough was glad people would no longer think he was just an attention-seeker, or indeed mad.

His position remained unaltered though. I gently inquired about his plan for his pending release and he said he intended to walk out of prison naked and hoped he would be left to tackle his long hike home to Bournemouth.

Gough told waiting press on Tuesday, "this is my vocation" before striding south, naked, his possessions in prison-issue plastic bags. If he makes it over the English border, he will find himself on safer ground – the Scottish interpretation of a breach of the peace charge has been far more stringent than its English counterpart.

Right now he should be somewhere in central Scotland, enjoying the pouring rain. If you live between Perth and Bournemouth, and police forces continue to look the other way, he could be coming to a town near you soon.