Left plimsoll, black, elastic sort, on the lock beam at Linthwaite. No laces to note, so noted. Damp right through and it had been there a while — a plimsoll holds water like a sponge and gives up its history that way, if condition counts as history, which in this work it does.
Rain most of the morning. Flask conditions fair under the bridge, and I'd point out that under the bridge is doing the work in that sentence — canal bridges are the towpath walker's lee wall, and knowing which ones have dry stonework at the base is the sort of knowledge that doesn't go in the register but underpins it. The second plimsoll of the year, as it happens, though the March one were a child's and white and this were neither.
The photograph came out grainy, which by November 2016 the notebook records without complaint, it being simply what photographs did. A black plimsoll on a wet lock beam in the rain is a hard subject and the camera made a fair attempt. Third canal shoe of the year an' all, after Slaithwaite in January and Milnsbridge in April. The towpaths provide steadily, which is why I keep walking them.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.