Wallowing in a drowsy slumber, I'm suddenly shocked from sleep by a plaintive cry from the next room.

Jerked awake, heart racing, I peer blearily at my watch: 5.58am. Two minutes before the alarm was due.

I drag myself away from the magnetic pull of the duvet and hurry into Felix's room to do the dutiful father routine. With bottle plugged securely into child I sit in the cosy darkness of his room and wait for him to drift back into milk-filled sleep. I stay like this for a while before depositing him back in his cot.

After the slow, careful movements of moments before suddenly it's action stations as I fight my way into my kit and out of the house. I'm out the door and into the garage, dragging the singlespeed out. I head off into the first hints of dawn light, crunching through the frosty grass of the green, just as the church chimes seven.

I go up the Rookery climb, my legs feeling pretty ropey thanks to a hard ride home last night and the fact that I'm not warmed up yet. A momentary lapse of concentration near one of the top steps means I fail to clear the climb - never a good start. Nonetheless I carry on along Wolverns Lane, lungs and legs trailing some way behind.

As I sweep through the carpet of leaves, rabbits burst into the bushes on helter-skelter courses as I pass, and deer, the first of the morning, spring in white-rumped bounds though the trees. The frost is deeper here - the mud is frozen into corrugations that my tyre scrunches over and the puddles have a coating of crackly ice.

At the top of the trail, I pause and silence descends. As I stand there, my breath curling away into the morning like golden smoke, I realise silence is such a misleading word to use in this landscape: every bush rustles with foraging birds, squirrels scramble up and down tree trunks and from the distance comes the mournful sound of a train horn. I punctuate this with two spring-loaded clacks as I clip back into the pedals and groan my way up the last of the trail. Bushes whip painfully at my legs and arms, and more agonisingly, my cold ears. It's been like this all morning - I think nature might be picking on me because of my invasion.

Soon I'm climbing a wide, rocky track up to the cricket pitch and here I stop again, this time to use the camera - wooden fingers fumbling with the buttons as I attempt to photograph some frost-whitened roots that, to me, resemble ribs sticking out of the ground. I'm not sure the pictures capture what I see, but they'll do and I feel better for having tried - there's nothing more frustrating than going for a ride with an SLR in your pack only to ignore everything because you feel that it would ruin the flow.

This attitude pays dividends 30 seconds later as I come into the open and the Sussex Weald is spread before me illuminated by the rising sun, just emerging above a cloud. It's breathtakingly lovely - mist hides in the hollows across the flat vastness in front of me, strangely purple in the morning light. I happily snap away for ten minutes before glancing at my watch and realising that time is pressing and I've not done any riding yet. From here I belt up the final bit of the climb to the tower and manage to clean it, much to my surprise. Another photo stop, this time hampered by a bone-chilling wind that reduces my hands to immobile stumps, and I'm off again, down a host of favourite trails that I haven't ridden for months. I even do the cheekiest of cheeky trails and it's still great - flicks, roots, corners that beg to be carved and a covering of russet autumn leaves. Perfect.

Approaching the end of Waggle Dance, still an ace trail that I don't do enough, I get an extra morning treat as a tawny owl swoops through the trees in front of me, perches itself on a nearby branch just long enough for me to contemplate getting the camera out, before it glides off silently again, out of the way of prying eyes.

More photo stops, more sleep-fuddled incompetence and more deer are the themes on the final leg back to the house: I just have the fleeting, flat-out pleasure that is Dog Shit Woods before I'm back in the village. I creep through the door to be greeted by a still silent house. I put the monitor to my ear and listen for a few moments to my son snuffling through his dreams. Then I sit down on the sofa, cup of tea in hand, and wait for the rest of the house to wake up. Frankly, they're missing the best part of the day.

Dominic Perry. Surrey, UK. Juggles bikes, family and work, and tries not to drop any of them.