I've walked up Castle Hill more or less monthly since 1976, and every so often it pays out. This were one of them times. Left trainer, grey, sole coming away at the toe, laces present, on the path up from the Lumb Lane side. Wind sharp on the top, the book says, and the book is being restrained — the wind on Castle Hill in April has opinions.
Two photographs and both came out, which the entry records without comment, though I know what I'll have been thinking, because I think it every time: the ones you take in a gale come out and the ones you take on a still day don't. I've no explanation and I've stopped looking for one.
Flask conditions good. The entry finishes with a line I'm glad I wrote — 'been walking up here since 1976 and it still turns one up now and again.' That's the whole business in a sentence, really. You keep going to a place, most times there's nowt, and then one April there's a grey trainer with the sole going, and the forty-odd years of nowt were part of it.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.