Alex Ritson

There was absolutely no information out of the area.

And what was the atmosphere like when you got there?

Oh, we were accompanied by miners.

We were flown there on a state jet and then driven out to a state farm where we met people who lived on another state farm, which was only about 20 miles from the reactor at Chernobyl.

And they were all briefed to tell us how everything was normal and it was not such a big deal.

But it was quite obvious that it was a very big deal.

It was a beautiful, beautiful spring day, just like today is in April.

We were in the fields with cherry blossom, I remember, and a beautiful bucolic, idyllic Ukrainian scene.

But there were Red Army, Soviet Army personnel around with Geiger counters measuring the radioactivity levels.

And that one thing I remember is them running Geiger counters over children to see how radioactive they were, the children who'd come from the immediate area around the reactor.

And how close did you get to the site?

Could you actually see the reactor?

Oh, no, no.

We were 50 odd miles away.

It was very radioactive.

They were not going to take us as close as that.

Thankfully, even still, we were a little bit worried.

But although they did feed us lunch at the state farm where we went in the countryside, sitting outside, giving us salad from the fields around.

which we now know were quite radioactive.

But the main thing I remember is the extraordinary sort of contrast between the tranquility and beauty of the scene and the countryside in Ukraine and the horror of what we were aware was going on very, very close by, about 50 miles away.