The self-catering kitchen at Eyam youth hostel is in an outside building, which meant a chilly walk to prepare our breakfast. It was another very cold morning, but we managed to get away a little earlier than yesterday, at 10.40 or so, for the four mile ride over Eyam Moor. We got some great views to Hathersage from Hazelford, then had to wait a while at the bottom of the hill while John took a phone call.

Riding on towards Hathersage we came across the David Mellor cutlery factory. David Mellor was one of the best known designers in Britain, renowned for his cutlery designs and also for designing bus shelters and the traffic light system still used in Britain today. We were cold already so it was inevitable that we would pop into the associated café, museum and shop. Working traffic lights surrounded us as we sat in the luxurious modern café enjoying delicious but expensive coffees and cakes. We managed to get even warmer walking around the linked shop, which boasted an open fire as well as a huge range of David Mellor’s products.

The forecast for tomorrow had settled on snow coming in overnight, as we had feared on Friday, so now we had to make some plans about how to prepare. We decided that it might be too difficult or dangerous to ride back to Flash tomorrow in the snow, so Will and John kindly volunteered to ride to Flash today and bring the cars back to the hostel. We all rode the mile or so up to the town, then Will and John set off at a good pace for Flash while the rest of us decided that the café by Ladybower Reservoir might not actually be open and returned to Hathersage to fund lunch.

Michael checked out several cafes and, after looking in the Go Outdoors shop and trying on a few hats we settled in the upstairs café of the “Outside” mountain shop that turned out to be nothing short of ideal. There was a huge range of hot snacks and meals available to order at good prices, a large area of seating and a warm and cosy atmosphere. We bought a full lunch there as well as coffees and felt it was the best find of the tour.

We left at 2.50 and rode the few miles to the village of Castleton, where an old fashioned sweet shop proved irresistible - edible bank notes were fun, and after a careful search we managed to find a few sweets that didn’t contain gelatine. We wandered on through the village to Peveril Castle, expecting to be able to scramble up the hill and enjoy the view, but there was an English Heritage ticket shop barring the way that wanted £6.90 per adult, so we gave that a miss. Nobody wanted a café stop here, so we decided to head on to the hostel.

We had a choice of going part of the way back towards Hathersage, at Hope, or taking what Google described as a shortcut over Barker Bank. Well we always like circular routes, so we tried the shortcut, which first took us along Hollowford Road and then dumped us at the start of a stony track lined with high hedges. The track had been washed away in places so resembled a muddy trench more than a track, but eventually, after a bit of a struggle, it brought us out onto the hillside.

We looked around to try to work out where we had to go next. A rough path headed up over the hill to the left, and it looked like it could be quite hard work with our bikes and luggage. Michael suggested that it might actually be better to go back to Castleton and take the road, but everyone liked the idea of a challenge and an adventure so we pressed on up the path, having to push the bikes on several occasions. The views were spectacular though, and we stopped more than once to catch our breath and enjoy the scenery.

We finally reached the top – Hollins Cross – at 5.10 and were rewarded with great views down the other side into Edale. We had been warned by some walkers that the track might get a bit muddy down the other side, so we didn’t hang around too long in the chilly breeze before starting down towards the road. It started with a stony track, then turned into a grassy path over the moorland, but then deteriorated to a sea of mud across the next field. As Dillan and Michael looked back from the gate they managed to catch George picking himself up from a muddy fall on the grassy section, and then saw Jude slip up in exactly the way he had warned George to avoid!

We found a slightly less muddy route around the quagmire, but when we got to the final farm track there was no avoiding the mud: Dillan set off bravely, but none of us could avoid getting bikes and shoes plastered in mud before we reached the road. It was 5.42. We shook ourselves down, stamped off the worst of the mud and assessed our bruises and sore muscles. But when we realised we had made it we all felt it had been a great adventure and one of our more challenging and interesting tour rides.

The last couple of miles to the hostel were relatively easy so we arrived around 5.55, cold and muddy but feeling quite pleased with ourselves. Will and John did not arrive with the cars for another hour, so we had time to enjoy a very tasty coffee in the hostel lounge before showering and settling down in the hostel dining room for pizzas made to order by the resident chef.

The latest weather forecast suggested the snow would turn to rain by 9.30am tomorrow morning and Michael felt reasonably sure we would have no problem getting home by the end of the day. John, however, was worried, as he had to be home for work on Tuesday. After thinking about it for some time he made the decision to leave the Peak District tonight and stay with relatives at Stafford, so he could guarantee being home by the end of tomorrow. George decided to stay with us and take his chances, but we helped Will and John load the bikes into their car and said farewell to them as they headed off into the darkness.

We rounded off our evening with some games of pool and table tennis in the games room, when Michael astonished George by actually beating a few people! When we eventually settled down to sleep at 10.45 we wondered what drama the night would bring.

John and Will rode 25 miles to Flash with a climb of 631m.

Michael got up at 2am, looked out of the hostel window towards the grounds and found that there was some light snow falling, but it wasn’t settling so he went back to bed. He got up again at 4am and now there was a very different picture: the snow had already settled to be a centimetre deep and was now falling quite rapidly. The car was parked on the car park outside the hostel, which is at the top of a sloping driveway through the woods. He decided it would be safer to move the car to the bottom of the drive, so he got dressed and moved it with snow falling all around. It felt very strange to have snow falling on a cycle tour.

When we all awoke in the morning the snow was still falling and everything outside our dorm window was white – it made a very attractive scene. We had to go outside to get to the member’s kitchen for breakfast, just like at Eyam, but today the journey was far more interesting than usual. There were several cars parked in the car park and we couldn’t see many of them getting out any time soon.

During breakfast the fire alarm went off in the member’s kitchen. The room was separate from the hostel, with a door opening to the outside and plenty of windows. We could see there was no fire here, and even if one suddenly sprang up we could have stepped outside or jumped out of a window in three seconds flat, so we decided to sit it out and hope our hearing wasn’t damaged. A hostelling couple making breakfast in the same room, however, clearly felt differently. The man stopped his breakfast preparations when he heard the alarm, looked at Michael for three seconds and then started walking to the door, zombie-style. They both waited outside in what was now light rain for a full ten minutes until the warden came along and told them it was a false alarm. It’s usually a good idea to respond quickly and immediately to any fire alarm of course, but perhaps there are occasions when common sense suggests a different course of action.

After snowball fights outside the entrance and some fabulously long snowball throws from George we packed our bags and had a final coffee in the hostel lounge. At around 10am we walked carefully down the driveway to the car and spent ten minutes clearing away the thick snow that had covered it. This was definitely a first: we have never been on a cycle tour before where snow has fallen, let alone snow this thick. There was a weekend trip to Crowcombe Heathfield youth hostel many years ago where there was snow, but as that was not a tour it doesn’t count.

The snow had turned to rain but the snow on the ground was not really thawing very quickly. Nevertheless Michael had no difficulty driving back to the road from here, and we then had to decide where to go next. The obvious choice was to take main roads off the Peak District to the lower ground as soon as possible, but we don’t much care for obvious choices: we had paid good money to come up here, we wanted to see Buxton, home of the famous spring water, and Buxton was not on the fastest route off the National Park. We turned around near Hathersage, drove back through Castleton and took the Winnats Pass over the top of the hill. There were several other cars driving over, and the snow had melted where it had been crushed by car tyres, so it was not really a difficult drive. In fact the scenery was fabulous, with snow lying all around on the high peaks, so it was a perfect choice to make the most of the unusual weather conditions.

We arrived at Buxton around 11am, parked the car on a side street and wandered down to the Café at Green Pavilion. The café was great, offering a vegetarian breakfast for Dillan and coffees for others. The town of Buxton looked very interesting, and especially attractive with its snowy covering. The youngsters had to have a few snowball fights outside the café of course while Michael was filming.

And so it was that we left the Peak District at 12:15 and headed homewards. The snow disappeared soon after we left the National Park, and all that remained was to drop Jude off to his Mum at Frankley services and to stop at Gloucester Farmshop services to try out the healthy foods available there – very tasty actually, and not too bad on price either! We got back to Buckfastleigh at 5.25 and took pleasure in letting John know that we had got home easily. Still, he had his reasons for making sure he was back, so we couldn’t blame him really.

This had turned out to be a very unusual Easter tour, but it will forever stay in our memories for being our first ever visit to the Peak District, for being one of the coldest tours we have ever run and for being the first ever tour where we had to contend with actual snow. Quite an adventure!