Our good friends Jim and Jenny had helped us prepare for returning to normal life by sharing their own experiences after they returned from a similar trip across the Americas. We were prepared to feel a little bit lost, uncomfortable even. Luckily for us both we have arrived home full of excitement, motivation and ambition for what our future may hold. This is thanks to an amazing new project that we would like to introduce you to.

We would like you to meet Charlie the Adventure Bear. Inspired by the Original Charlie, Charlie the Adventure Bear will be the star of a Children’s book series aimed to entertain and educate children aged between 4-6 years old.

The idea was borne from a chat with our good friend Brett whilst we were relaxing in Santiago, Chile. He had said that ‘Charlie is the real adventurer in all of this!’

By this time Lorna had already created over 15 fact files for the children back at her school and Charlie had been through all of the ups and downs of such a huge trip with us. So, an idea turned into a project that we are now committed to prove a success.

We began to spend our days creating characters for the books, problems that Charlie may have to solve, the wonderful places that he will visit and people that he could meet. We soon realised that Charlie will be reliving our very own experiences but through the eyes of children- something that will hopefully inspire the next generation of budding adventurers!

We decided to make Charlie’s motorbike a magical motorbike and after talking to John, our illustrator, we added a sidecar for his friends to join him in. We decided that Charlie will live in England with his best friend Max and ride off into the World Map on Max’s bedroom wall to faraway places. He will meet friends but also some unfriendly characters too. He will visit famous sites and have to overcome problems on his way. All this is whilst Max is fast asleep. Charlie will always be home in time for Max to wake up and find a souvenir from his adventure stuffed into his little rucksack.

Now, if you had said to either of us that this would be our chosen path once we returned to the UK then we would have smiled and thought wow, what an amazing idea! Of course we had no idea back then that we would find ourselves in this position with such an incredible opportunity to share our adventures with children around the world.

So, please keep an eye out next time you are in a book store- Charlie and his Magic Motorbike may be riding around the book shelves in the children’s section!