I DISMOUNTED from my penny-farthing in the heart of Makariv, a provincial Ukrainian town 35 miles west of the capital, Kyiv, and walked into a restaurant called Vasabi. It was deserted except for a group of 10 young women, who were sitting around a rectangular table crammed full of local dishes and bottles of Ukrainian vodka. There was a palpable silence as my unexpected presence on a Sunday was digested. I doffed my black top hat, leant my 54in-diameter-wheeled bicycle against the wall and blurted out: ‘Excuse me for interrupting, but I’m British. Nice to meet you.’ I had stumbled into Lena’s private birthday celebrations.
Shortly afterwards, having been joined by my expedition colleagues Paula Reid and Mark Cropley, we exchanged greetings and I explained that we were midway through a 400-mile charity cycle challenge from the southern city of Odessa to the most northern town on the border with Belarus,
