She has just spent a month at sea on the Clipper Round the World Race – described as one of the toughest endurance events in the world.

But now Medway’s Paralympic skiing gold medallist Charlotte Evans, who arrived back home in Chatham this week, is already considering her next sporting challenge.

Charlotte, who celebrated her 25th birthday this week, said: “Nothing will beat the clipper race but I want to do something else. I just don’t know what yet. Preferably something that doesn’t involve being wet and or cold. Perhaps something in the heat, a desert run perhaps.”

Charlotte, who lives with her parents in Maidstone Road, flew out to Australia at the beginning of the year for the 7,000-mile leg of the voyage from the Whitsunday Islands off Australia to Qingdao, China, via Vietnam.

While she loved most of the trip and has made lifelong friends in the crew, a low point came when she was knocked unconscious by a giant wave in the South China Sea.

She recalled: “I had come up from the lower deck to tend to a sail when the wave suddenly smacked me and knocked me flying across the deck, smashing my head. It was pitch black, but I could see blood everywhere and then saw it was coming from my head. Luckily, I landed on the ship’s doctor.”

At first it was thought the knock could bring back the return of her concussion which she suffered in training last year. But Charlotte made a full recovery and “just got on with it”.

The ongoing problems she had to endure was the constant cold, and permanently wearing wet clothes.

She said: “Sometimes on shift it would be too cold to speak. But I thought we can’t sit in silence for hours so started a sing-song routine. I became known as a bit of a cabaret artist."

Mum Siobhan was at the harbour in China to greet her daughter while she left the rest of the crew to go on to the next leg.

The novice sailor said: “We had all learnt the basic of sailing before we set off after rigorous training in Southampton. I had never sailed before and at first it terrified me because it was totally out of my comfort zone.

“It was the people that made it for me. When I left them on board I cried my eyes out.”

As a surprise, dad Keith flew out to join his wife and daughter, and they all travelled back to England together – arriving on Monday.

She is also looking forward to being reunited with her sister, Emily, also a skiier who is currently coaching in France.

Charlotte, a sports science graduate, also spoke for the first time about suffering concussion in an accident while training for skiing with her visually impaired Paralympic partner Kelly Gallagher last January.

The serious collision has meant she has not competed since, and she underwent four months of treatment at a specialist hospital.

She said: “It was scariest time ever. I had to go to hospital three times a week. Basically, they had to train my brain to remember again and all I could do was sit in a dark room.

"It changes your personality. I was deaf for a while, and when I got my hearing back I used to yell at my dad for making so much noise opening a packet of crisps.”

She said: “I am doing some coaching. I miss skiiing, but at the moment I don’t honestly know what I am going to do. I am just liking being home and spoilt rotten and getting lots of cuddles."

Kelly and Charlotte won Paralympic gold in Sochi, Russia, in 2014. The pair were later made MBEs and reached the final of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year vote.