Voting has closed and the votes have been counted. Take a bow teddy 10, Charmin the charity bear, who works at The Rainbow Centre for Children in Bristol looking after recently bereaved and seriously ill children.

View a full-size picture of the Charmin's winning picture

Charmin and the children at the centre will now have a new friend to play with, Noel the Christmas Bear - a similarly gigantic size. Noel and Charmin should get on like a house on fire this Christmas. Charmin, despite being pictured on a Harley Davidson, has not had many opportunities to travel - what with his size and dedication to his work. Perhaps now Noel can provide cover so Charmin can enjoy a well earned holiday.

The Hamleys Noel Christmas Bear will be winging its way to The Rainbow Centre for Children in Bristol in plenty of time to bring Christmas cheer.

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• The Finalists - view the 25 selected and vote for your favourite now

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• Gallery: view your entries for the best travelled bear competition

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• Gallery: Some non-bear (therefore non-qualifying) images of fun furry animals

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• Gallery: Syd the Bear - the original intrepid teddy

The voting was incredibly close, a rush of e-mails in the final 48 hours beating Edward Bear (picture 19) into second place by a small handful of votes - he obviously has a lot of friends as well. The first and second placed bears took a resounding 40% of the votes between them, many more than the next contenders.

Others to perform well in the poll included Eleanor Scriven's bears on the Great Wall of China (picture 20), Bob Bleczinski's surfing Bear (picture 6), Scuba Bear from North Wales (7), Fairford Church of England Primary School's Geobear (5), Manchester's own Billiard and Craig (3) and George on tour in Alaska (2).

Syd - the original travelling teddy

For 18 months roving reporter Syd the Bear has been beaming us pictures of himself on his travels around the world, taking in many of the most famous landmarks on the planet.

Somehow Neil and Christine Hamilton slipped in there to interrupt the cultured bear travels, but we'll forgive him for that. To check out where he's been view Syd's gallery below.

Meanwhile, we asked Syd about his travels. In an exclusive interview, here's a rundown of where he's been and his favourite places:

"I've been to plenty of places. Firstly Australia, four-and-a-half years ago (I was found at a shop in Heathrow airport) and that is why I am called Syd.

"I have a website that is quite out of date now at www.sydthebear.co.uk. It has pictures of me in a fair few places (Albania, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Malta, Monaco, Morocco, Oman, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Trinidad, Turkey, UAE and the US).

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