It all seemed so simple in theory: travel to some of the most beautiful parts of the world and home-school the children along the way. A few hours teaching in the morning could be followed by whole days of outdoor enjoyment. What could be nicer?
We had never done anything like it before, but how hard could it be to teach just two children - not a class of 30 screaming kids - the basics of maths and English? And like all doting parents we believed that our children were dedicated students.
Looking back, I realise that we were a little naive. As rock band Coldplay put it in The Scientist: " Nobody said it was easy / No one ever said it would be this hard."
When we lived in Beijing we knew several people who took their children's education into their own hands, partly because they believed it was the right thing to do and partly because they could not afford expensive international schools. They devised fun and interesting timetables that taught the basic skills and left time for other activities.
One parent we knew spent a lot of time travelling around China while teaching her daughter. She made home-schooling look easy. So when my husband and I decided to leave Beijing and take our children Sam, eight, and Tilly, five, on a five-month trip before heading back to Britain, we naturally turned to home-schooling. We thought we could enjoy Bali, Australia and New Zealand to the full while ensuring our little ones did not miss out on their studies.
But the difficulties began on day one. "Oh, do we have to?" whined the children when we pulled out the books for the very first time.
No amount of cajoling could get Tilly interested in learning to read, the big challenge we had set ourselves before leaving China.