Up and rolling by 4.37am. I started early to catch the best of the light, and the forecast was right about a morning of sunshine.

What the forecast didn’t warn me about was the fog. There were pockets of the stuff visible below Alfreton and I assumed my destination eight miles away would already be burning it off. I stopped to took iPhone photos even though I was eager to get to the start of that day’s loop, one of the book’s shortest at just 13 or so miles.

I hadn’t factored in the climbing, and therefore rode slow enough to catch glorious glimpses of the sunrise through the hedges and the trees.

And even when I started descending I was happy to slam on the brakes when I spotted odd stuff. Such as a hall dedicated to Florence Nightingale. A plaque on the wall noted this wasn’t a random dedication to a Victorian heroine but a geographically sound one. She was brought up in the house called Lea Hurst, definitely not to ne confused with the right wing comic Lee Hurst.

At just after 6am I had the expansive Cromford mills buildings all to be myself. Stunning that so much of Arkwright’s enterprise still exists, and is rightly a World Heritage site. After my 13-mile book loop, the GPS track of which hasn’t been made public on Strava, I had a pot of tea and a scone in the canal workshop’s cafe, which was heaving by then.