Some urban mileage around Buxton later on confirms the suspicion that it’s the Golf R that better deals with smaller, sharper lumps and bumps, and that has the better town ride. There’s surprisingly little aggression about the Golf’s low-speed damping, and perfect calibration about its pedal responses and transmission. When you just want it to be unobtrusive and easy to drive – and, at times, that’s exactly what you want from an everyday-use car – the Golf R feels like it might be just about any other Golf. The A35, by contrast, can’t help announcing itself, and bristling with purpose, wherever it goes.

10.17am, Friday: Cat and Fiddle Pass

Sleeping on it hasn’t made this exercise any easier to adjudicate. Still, for now at least, the backdrop to my internal dialogue is a handsome one. We’ve escaped much in the way of snow overnight, so the last of our passes – the Cat and Fiddle, which runs west out of Buxton towards Macclesfield – starts the day open and clear, and is ours to enjoy almost exclusively. This would be the best pass of the lot, I reckon, but for the 50mph limit and the average speed cameras. I should have seen that coming.

But the skies don’t stay crisp and clear for long. By mid-morning, the snowy barrage that has dumped on western Britain overnight is with us, and Olgun cuts a dejected, soggy-trainered figure as he grabs the last of our photos stood ankle-deep at the side of the road. It’s as if the climate was congratulating us, at first, on completing our little quartet of passes, but is now reminding us that we’ve only come this far by chance and good timing – and that chipping off home with our prides and panels intact mightn’t be a bad idea.

We still need a winner, though. If we were weighing up the pros and cons of these two as driver’s cars, victory would go to the A35 by a pretty clear margin. Tick off the qualities that most would want in a hot hatchback – a great engine, feelsome steering, a poised and immersive chassis – and the A35 has the Golf R narrowly beaten on most of them. That it is undoubtedly a more desirable thing than the ageing, classless VW will count for a great deal for many, too.