Nick Lowe does not mean to cause offence, he just likes riding his bike in the nude.

So when a motorist called police after seeing the 40-year-old cycling naked one afternoon on Akatarawa Rd near Upper Hutt, he was shocked.

Lowe was convicted of offensive behaviour and slapped with a $200 fine, which he refused to pay. Yesterday he took his case to the High Court in Wellington in a bid to overturn his conviction.

“I couldn’t believe it, it just wasn’t right,” Lowe told The Dominion Post. “It’s a lifestyle thing – to put clothes on is uncomfortable. It’s not about exhibitionism, I’m just uncomfortable in clothes.” His lawyer, Michael Bott, argued that riding naked on a rural road was not offensive, and Kiwis had become more tolerant toward nudity.

He pointed to events such as Boobs on Bikes, the Hero Parade, National Nude Day, Naked Wedding Day and a recent naked cycle on the Central Otago Rail Trail as proof that “we’re not as puritan as we used to be”.

Justice Denis Clifford reserved his decision. At one point he apologised after chuckling at a photograph of naked people in Christchurch’s Cathedral Square.

Lowe, a builder from Johnsonville, describes himself as a “natural athlete”. He completed last year’s Coast to Coast naked from the waist down, and regularly trains in the buff.

He competed in last weekend’s Coast to Coast but wore clothes to improve his time. He can run naked for about two hours before it gets too uncomfortable, but he uses “a lot more anti-chap cream than most”.

“I walk around the house naked, I mow the lawns naked, I’ll do the garden naked. A lot of smelly, sweaty clothes, why do that when you don’t need to?”

He said nobody else had ever complained about his naked ventures, and that his ride on Akatarawa Rd last year coincided with World Nude Bike Day.

Mr Bott said Boobs on Bikes featured bare-breasted woman in G-strings riding down Auckland’s main street, and was not deemed offensive behaviour.

But Crown prosecutor Michael Snape said the public was warned about that high-profile event and they did not have to see the nudity if they did not want to.

Lowe said he had no plans to curb his naked ambition. “It would be nice to know that on a stinking hot day, I could just go out and walk naked to Oriental Bay and go for a swim.”