Laybys have been reliable ground since the early notebooks, and the one on the A62 near Slaithwaite has come good more than once. This were a right shoe, black, the slip-on sort, so no laces to note, which always leaves the laces line of the entry looking a bit bare but you record what's there, not what you'd like to be there.
It sat on the verge at the far end of the layby, heel to the road, in fair condition considering the spray coming off the lorries. A layby shoe takes punishment that a moorland shoe never sees and you have to judge its condition accordingly. Fair, for a layby, is good.
The book records that it were windy and that the wind took the foil off me sandwich, which I retrieved. I want to be clear that I did retrieve it, because the entry says so and because you don't leave foil on a verge, whatever the wind's doing. Flask conditions adequate — a layby flask is never at its best, there's too much going on. Two photographs, taken from the layby side rather than the road side, which is the only sensible way to photograph owt on the A62. I remember the lorries better than I remember the shoe, if I'm honest, but the shoe is the one in the register, so the shoe is the one that counts.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.