‘One day, as I returned from the shops on my bike, laden down with six precariously wobbling carrier bags of food for my three teenage sons, an idea began sneaking into my mind. It was like a virus which had lain dormant for years, and suddenly it burst forth into a fully fledged outbreak... I would go cycling!’

Gwen Maka, a forty-something Englishwoman, was told by everyone that her dream of cycling from Seattle to Costa Rica, across the deserts, over the Rocky Mountains, and into the sub-tropics of Central America, was impossible. Riding With Ghosts is her frank but never too serious account of her epic 7,500-mile trip.

She handles exhaustion, climatic extremes, lechers and a permanently saddle-sore bum in a gutsy, hilarious way. Her journey, intertwined with the legends of past events, is a testament to the power of determination.