Castle Hill again, second visit of the year to make the register, and the Hill had now given me two in one year, which it had never managed before — one a year had been its habit since 2010, regular as owt. The notebook calls this "decent going for one hill," which is restrained even by the book's standards. I put it down to the walking-from-the-house arrangements: the Hill were getting weekly attention instead of monthly, and attention is what finds shoes. There's a lesson in that I've never quite acted on.
Left sandal, brown leather, buckle sort, and the buckle still fastened — noted then, and worth repeating now, because a fastened buckle on a lone sandal is the same class of detail as tied laces. I record it and stop there. It were in the hollow by the path up the east side, tucked where the ground dips and holds things.
A fine morning, warm, with haze over the valley so the view were more suggestion than view. I sat on the stool half an hour, the book says, and flask conditions were excellent — July does flatter a flask, but excellent is excellent and I don't hand it out lightly. Photograph came out. A sandal in July on a warm hill with good tea is about as gentle as this pursuit gets, and after the spring we'd had, gentle were welcome. The Hill had one more in it for 2020, but neither of us knew that in July.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.