Rain steady all morning, and the flask rose to it: conditions very good, best of the autumn, says the book, and the book doesn't hand out 'best of the autumn' lightly. Sometimes the weather and the flask balance each other out and you come home level. This were one of them days.
The shoe: right boot, brown, sole split, one lace only, on the towpath below Linthwaite near Lock 15E. A boot with a split sole in steady rain is about as sorry a sight as the canal offers, and I gave it the same attention I'd give owt else, which is the whole principle of the thing. Two photographs, one came out.
No stool in that weather — that's in the book as a decision, not an apology. The stool is canvas and canvas has limits. Home by one, it says, and I'll have had the heater on in the car and been satisfied with the morning. November on the towpath asks a bit more of you than June does, and I've always thought the November entries are worth slightly more because of it, though they're all worth the same in the register, which is the point of a register.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.