Around the British Isles in 80 Races

SO this is it. Milford, a village lying in the heart of Derbyshire’s Derwent Valley, and the starting point for a year-long running adventure.

It’s not the most picturesque or romantic of places to set out on this challenge. Given the choice I would much prefer a snowy peak in Scotland, a misty moor in Yorkshire, or perhaps a rural setting in the Cotswolds; one of those little chocolate box villages sprinkled with thatched cottages and the rich smell of wood smoke spilling out of the chimneys. Instead, I am celebrating New Year’s Eve in this tiny hamlet which has the busy A6 between Duffield and Belper choking its way through.

Milford grabbed a name for itself during the Industrial Revolution when a string of textile mills sprung up alongside the River Derwent. Jedediah Strutt built a water-powered cotton mill, and after that the village took off big-time. Sadly, much of the 150-year-old mill building was demolished between 1952 and 1964. A huge chimney-stack now dominates the Milford skyline, while what remains of the old mill has been transformed into workshops. But hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.

It’s New Year’s Eve, 30 minutes to the witching hour, and Milford Social Club is a surreal location as a starting point for this adventure. This is a typical, old-fashioned Working Men’s Club with a tatty, tired and worn feel to it. Several locals are sat round a table at one end of the room nursing pints and sharing a joke. Hazel, a lady in the autumn of her years, holds custody of the bar exchanging the latest village gossip with a Scottish lady perched on a stool, smoking away. “Help yourself to some food, duck,” says Hazel, smiling and pointing to platefuls of pickled onions, sausage rolls and potato wedges. I bet the carbo-loading Kenyans don’t get offered this sort of feast before a big race.

With the clock slowly ticking towards midnight, runners are streaming steadily into the social club where race organiser, David Denton, has taken up a position at the other end of the room. Sat next to the electronic one-arm bandit machine, David is scribbling down race entries while handing out numbers and safety pins. With his round spectacles and grey beard, David has that professorial look. He’s an interesting guy who has been organising races for 40 years, yet spends the months commuting between homes in Derbyshire, Prague and India; a strange combination of holiday destinations.

New Year’s Eve is a time to get well and truly bladdered. Usually in that hazy, drunken stupor, it is a chance to look back on the last 12 months with rose-tinted spectacles. Over a sherbert or two, it is an opportunity to agree that though it was another pile of trite, next year can only get better. It is not a time to throw on your running shoes, definitely not if you’re sober. But on the pavement outside the Milford Social Club dozens, of suspiciously sane souls, clad in tight leggings and fluorescent tops, plus the occasionally woolly hat, are limbering up for the Bryan Clifton Memorial Midnight Run which is held every New Year’s Eve at three minutes to midnight.

I must be out of my skull for this, my first race in a 12-month running adventure. I intend to run into 2007 with this 2kilometre dawdle beside the Derwent. The goal, injury and sanity permitting, is to be back here in Milford