Lara Kirsten has stirred up the small community of Hogsback with her nude biking antics. Picture: Francois le Roux

By Barbara Hollands

A LEISURELY bike ride in the buff down Hogsback’s main street on a lazy Friday afternoon by local concert pianist, poet and self-confessed “free spirit” Lara Kirsten has stirred up a storm in a C-cup in the arty mountain village.

Kirsten, 32, Hogsback’s own “Lady Godiva”, raised the ire of some fellow residents when she set off on her naked ride down the main street on January 20, with some even threatening legal action.

Having “cycle-streaked” in the Hogsback Pass three years ago without any objections from the locals, she was “taken aback” by the response and it took speedy intervention by the local community policing forum (CPF) to cool frayed tempers.

“When I did it the first time there was no criticism from any angle,” Kirsten, who loves to go bare whenever she can, told Weekend Post in a cheeky telephonic interview. “I am always in the nude – I’m even in the nude while I’m talking to you,” she said.

Kirsten said her naked caper from the top of the village main street and down the Hogsback Pass was an “off the cuff” decision she made while going shopping with a friend. “I just said ‘I’m going to do it again’ and off I went. I started from the top of Main Road so there were quite a few people coming and going. The [clay] hog sellers in the street even cheered me on.”

She said she did not mean any disrespect when she cycled through the village starkers. “I’m a free spirit so I’m not constrained by social norms. I like challenging people but I’m not a provocative artist. I’m a trained classical pianist so come from a rigid training background and being nude has flowered into a freedom of expression.

“I’m a good Afrikaans girl and even a bit Calvinistic, but I want to reform myself and not let the system take control of my mind and soul.”

However, after being invited to “chat” with the town’s CPF, Kirsten will now confine her nudie bike escapades to the forest. “Two women from the CPF requested I not do this again in the main road but rather in the forest. They said four people wanted to lay charges against me!

“But about 10 to 20 people told me next time I do it they are coming with me. They said it should be a yearly institution.”

Hogsback CPF deputy chairwoman Monika Hof said although Kirsten had pedalled through the village buck naked “in all innocence”, some residents were less tolerant than others. “She was like a bolt of lightning going through there and some people wanted to lay charges,” Hof said.

(This is a shortened version of an article first published in the print edition of Weekend Post on Saturday January 29.)