Laybys are reliable ground — anyone who's followed the register a while will know the layby entries hold their own against any moor — and the one off the B6114 above Scammonden Water produced a shoe well above its station. Left brogue, black, proper punched toe, laces in and tied, and the sole barely worn. A shoe that had done next to no walking, sat in a layby above a reservoir with the M62 grinding away below. "Smart shoe for a layby but that's not for me to wonder at," says the notebook, and it isn't, and I didn't.
I'll add, writing this up in 2026, that the barely-worn ones sit differently in the memory than the weathered ones. A boot that's done a winter on a moor has a history you can read in the leather. A brogue with a clean sole keeps its history to itself. Both get the same fields filled in. That's the system, and the system is the point.
The weather were sharp — first proper cold of the autumn, with the wind coming up the valley off the motorway, which at Scammonden is a wind with traffic in it. Flask drunk stood by the wall; no stool weather, no stool ground. Photograph came out well. Black brogue, grey wall, October light — the camera likes a bit of contrast and for once it got some. Number 179, filed without wondering, though I'll allow the punched toe were handsome.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.