The mist was so thick when I woke up, that I could barely see John’s tent a few metres away. I was surprised to hear that it wasn’t raining, but in the time it took me to get up and walk over to the lean-to at reception to have a brew, it was pouring down. We had some porridge and checked the forecast while waking up.

A cold front was passing over and by the time the lads were ready, it had passed by leaving pretty much full blue sky! We were all very damp, but ready to roll.

We started yesterday’s route again, and this time made it to Harbrough Rocks.

I first came here on a Scout Camp with Andy Brown! I’ve been back a few times since as the routes are all really good despite being a bit short. Perfect for today though, and literally a stones throw from the cycle path.

We climbed the classic arête and towers, but couldn’t stay too long as we still had a long ride ahead of us. We left the crag at 14:00, and continued a while on the High Peak Trail.

Then detoured on to the National Cycle Network, on Route 538.

This involved some back roads, farm tracks, bumpy trails and even a little bit of single track. At several times it also required a bit of pushing to get up some of the hills with our loaded bikes. We resisted the lure of the pub at Biggin and arrived at Hartington at 16:30. It’s a very well to do looking place with a very nice looking farm shop cafe. Sadly, after deciding to spend some of the budget on tea and cake, we found that they’d closed the cafe at 16:00!

It didn’t matter as we had everything we needed really and there wasn’t much daylight left. We needed to press on. It was lucky we did as the trail got tricky in places, slowing our average speed.

And we needed to stop and make some running repairs to John’s trailer.

We crossed Wolfensdale, and came into the Beresford Dale.

The sun was almost on the horizon as we rolled into camp at Hulme End.

As luck would had it, a warm wind was blowing across the empty campsite (field). We had just enough time to get the tents up and let them blow dry in the wind.

Dinner was a fine pasta pesto affair, eaten in the dark, with a shooting star overhead.