So another coffee and more pondering on how to introduce Charlie Chadwick to new people led me to the intriguing world of Twitter.   My teenage daughter#2 was kind enough to get me started and has tried to educate me in the ‘etiquette’ of Tweeting and Following (who said teenagers were no use for anything) and as a result I have gradually been increasing the number of followers on Charlie’s Twitter feed.  Hopefully, most of them then come to have a peek at this site and then stay a while to discover Charlie’s wonderful drawings and stories.

Twitter is definitely a world of ‘snap’ judgements as you must base your decision to ‘follow’ on very little information.  The profile and cover pictures offer a large clue and anyone with a bicycle against the backdrop of a beautiful scenic view would seem, to me,  to have the potential to enjoy Charlie’s work.  I have enjoyed many of the descriptions people have made for themselves, trying to encapsulate their personalities and interests in just a few words.  Humans are so creative….I am very impressed!

My first instinct was always to think that cyclists are so busy out with their bicycles exploring the countryside that they wouldn’t have the time or inclination to be surfing the net, but just like Charlie, they clearly have wide and varied interests and talents.  And, for technology minded souls, they can take their internet access with them on their bikes too, using mobile phones and WiFi, so that they can Tweet from mountain tops and coffee shops.

However you found your way here, a very warm welcome to all.

Whilst enjoying my morning coffee (no cake, for once) I thought I would test out the wonders of the World Wide Web and decided to search ‘Charlie Chadwick’ in Google Images.  I scrolled through a selection of colour snapshots of musicians, aspiring models and a few of Charlie Sheen and then, there they were, a small selection Charlie’s drawings.  No surprise really as they were all clearly linked back to this website.  But then, I spotted a rather different web address on one of the distinctive illustrations and felt that I should investigate further.  With much curiosity, I clicked, and what joy……an entire article dedicated to Charlie’s work on ‘Tamia Nelson’s Outside, No Octane Explorations Near and Far’.  I was so excited that I felt I had to get in touch with the author, Tamia Nelson: geologist, artist, photographer, cyclist, mountaineer, paddler, snowshoer and skier, to say thank you for sharing Charlie’s story even further afield. She was keen to hear about many of the new developments on the site here and very graciously offered to re-run her, now revised, post.

Letting the world know about Charlie’s stories and drawings has been my Dad’s passion for so very many years now, it is so rewarding to know that he is finally achieving his goal.  And, in the process, getting to know so many interesting and busy people from all corners of the world.

I wonder what tomorrow’s coffee break will uncover……….watch this space!

At the moment we have been placing on the website on Sunday mornings, sequentially, all of Charlie’s Journal entries for 1922, and they will have been completed by early 2015.  Now it is the easiest thing in the world for us to then forge ahead with 1923 and then eventually 1924 and so on, but there is an increasing amount of copy as the years mount up.

Some of us, and I include myself in this group, may not live long enough to see the project completed at the present rate of progress, there is so much to publish, and we are considering ramping up the publishing programme so that we could have additional weekly releases, say on Wednesday’s, or even twice a mid-week, such as Tuesday’s and Thursday’s, giving us three times the present volume.  To offset that suggestion of course, is that from about a month’s time the articles themselves become much longer, and we don’t want our readers to suffer overload.  What do you think dear reader ?

Your comments would be much appreciated.

In a recent email from David he dropped in these comments

I know the current releases are short and scrappy in the main, but that is because Charlie was just getting into his stride as a teenager. It is almost behind us now …

Charlie’s output for his first year of keeping a journal was a total of 34 pages. 1923 a total of 93 pages 1924 a total of 167 pages including his first efforts at sketching. 1925 comes to 260 pages!

Lots of material and none of those years contain articles scheduled for Books.

Our dedicated band of followers may only be small but I hope that this whets your appetite and keeps you looking forward to what is to come in the future.

The January edition of ‘Cycling World‘ (on sale at most W H Smith branches) has really done Charlie Chadwick proud.  A six page spread which includes reproducing Charlie’s entertaining story set in the Lake District titled ‘In Festive Mood’ describing a New Year We.R.7 break in Patterdale in 1928.

Quite apart from an informed review of our first Charlie Chadwick volume, there is a full page biography of Charlie including his nineteen fifties passport photograph in a very striking suit (also reproduced here), a mode of dress I would never associate with Charlie.

The New Year holiday at Patterdale reads just like the clubrun/hostel weekends I remember so well from my youth, and all the antics they get up to in just a few days in the Lakes makes very good reading.  That is Charlie’s gift to us – the ability to bring the past to life in a way that we can relate to.