Biking across North America is a dream shared by many but one which comes true for very few.

One of those who had the courage to turn his dream into a reality was 38-year-old Bryan Sandy, who sold his Barnards Green home, cashed in his savings and shipped his BMW motorbike to New York for a 35,000-mile journey around one of the world's largest continents.

It was the "ambition of a lifetime" that saw the one-time Navy man chart momentous world events from close at hand and discover four other Malverns - towns founded by nostalgic settlers from Worcestershire who put down roots in a brave new world.

On his arrival in New York in June, Bryan took panoramic photographs from the top of the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty, unaware that the skyline would be dramatically altered before he returned home.

"I was in Colorado when events in New York happened," he said. "The mood was pretty sombre, I don't think people knew how to react at the time."

After leaving New York, Brian zig-zagged his way around the country, stopping at Niagara Falls, the site of the decisive American Civil War battle in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and Ohio, where he came upon his first Malvern.

"This Malvern was probably a similar size to Upton but more spread out. I didn't stay there - it was a bit redneck - I wasn't comfortable with the atmosphere."

After riding across the Rocky Mountains and up to British Columbia, Bryan quickly turned round after finding himself driving toward a pack of wolves.

"I turned round pretty sharpish," he said. "For a little, short, fat guy I can move quite fast when I want to."

Continuing northwards, Bryan made a 400-mile round trip on gravel and mud roads to the Arctic Circle, where he saw the Northern Lights.

"It really was amazing. It was just so barren and I had such a sense of achievement," he said. "I then went south to California and camped in Death Valley, where the temperature dropped to 96 degrees in the night from 124 in the day. It was very hot and I didn't get much sleep. I just lay and perspired. Every time the wind blew it was like someone going over you with a hot hand-drier.

"On about September 18, I went to Malvern in Arkansas, a very Western-style town with brick houses rather than wood. It was quite nice.

"I then went to Malvern in Pennsylvania, which we in Worcestershire are twinned with. It's quite similar to our Malvern in some respects in that it's quite Victorian, built around the railway. They've got a memorial from the War of Independence to 50 of their brave colonials. who were massacred by the British just outside the town. They describe it as the 'dastardly British who slaughtered our brave soldiers'."

On arriving in Washington DC, Bryan found the effects of terrorist attacks on September 11 began to show.

"There was a lot of overt security and police on every corner, with sirens going off. But as long as you didn't go round looking like a criminal you were all right," he said. "Most things were open, although you couldn't get to the base of the Washington memorial.

"People were coming to terms with what had happened. By that point they had got over the shock and were in the angry stage of emotion.

"I then went down through the Carolinas to Florida and was actually in Boca Raton where the anthrax thing happened. People were non-plussed by it, it was just something in the media at that point. Nobody knew whether it was a terrorist attack or what."

With the time for his October 25 return looming closer, Bryan visited his last Malvern, in Alabama.

"It was a bit like a trailer park," he said. "There was very little there and wasn't anywhere to stay. It was very, very tiny.

"I stopped about five miles away in a motel where orange tornado warnings were showing up on little maps in the corner of the TV screen. It was exhilarating. If a tornado comes everyone just goes and gets shelter in a brick building away from windows."

Now back safely in Malvern, England, Bryan has the trip-of-a-lifetime to look back on.

"It was just pure enjoyment," he said. "I would go back to America. It's a wonderful, nice place to be, although I wouldn't want to work there. Everyone just seems to work all the time, which is, I suppose, capitalism at its best."