Hot, and the moor smelling of dry grass, which the notebook records like it were a finding, and happen it were — 2018 turned into that sort of summer. Right trainer, white gone grey, laces frayed, tongue pulled out, on the spillway wall at Butterley Reservoir, Marsden.
Flask conditions poor — tea doesn't want drinking in that heat, but the book confirms I had a cup out of habit, and habit is most of this job. Three photographs, good light again. This were the summer the light kept being good, and I logged it every time it happened without ever getting to the bottom of it. I still haven't. Some years are just lit better than others. The spillway were bone dry, which in June you'd expect, but 2018 kept it dry well into autumn, as the whole county will remember.
A spillway wall is a good presenting spot for a shoe — dry, flat, visible from the path both ways. I've had a few off walls over the years and they photograph the best. The trainer itself had seen service: white gone grey, laces frayed, and the tongue pulled right out, which is a detail I always note, so I noted it.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.