SWITZERLAND IS NOWHERE NEAR SPAIN
A lifelong outdoor enthusiast, there’s not much Charlie isn’t keen for—be it on snow, bikes, or late-night human experiments. He jumped on a trail bike with no knee pads and an XC helmet and took on the enduro scene.
Chapter One – How it all began
It all started with Tom Bradshaw at the Trans NZ in February. Bradshaw is a long time MTB mate and the most Kiwi, southern bloke to ever come out of the North Island. The man lives and breathes bikes, one of those guys who takes his bike to bed. At Trans NZ his arm was in a sling, so I asked the usual questions: “What track did you crash on? How big did you go?” His answer took me by surprise. “Believe it or not,” he began, “I broke my shoulder in the bedroom. I had a spill off the bed and landed perfectly on a jar of Marmite with my shoulder.”
Pondering whether to dig deeper, my thoughts were answered. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to”, Bradshaw remarked. I left it at that.
He later turned to me with a sparkle in his eye. He mentioned that he wouldn’t be able to race the South American rounds of the Enduro World Series (EWS) following the Marmite incident. “Would you like to take my spot?” he asked. “Yes” was obviously the answer.
It was over in South America that I met Sam Shaw. Sam is known as one of New Zealand’s
