Last shoe of 2020, and the Hill provided it, which by then felt less like luck and more like an understanding. Right boot, brown leather, laced to the third eyelet and then nowt, toe scuffed white. In the rough grass below the tower. Third from Castle Hill that year — 171 in March, 175 in July, and now this — and the notebook states, with the quiet firmness of a man who has been asked before, "which is a record for a single location and I've checked." I had checked. I've checked again since, writing these up, and it stood until it didn't, but in December 2020 it were the record and the Hill wore it well.
Forty-four years of walking up that hill more or less monthly, and it gave me three shoes in the one year it were sometimes the only hill I were allowed. I don't go in for reading meaning into things, so I'll just set them facts side by side and leave them there.
Cold and clear, breath showing — a proper December morning, the tower sharp against the sky and the valleys laid out below with their lights still on. Flask conditions excellent, the second excellent of the year, and both earned. Photograph came out well. "Last of the year and a proper one to finish on," says the book, and reading it back now I'd not change a word. A brown boot below the tower, tea holding its heat, and 2020 closed at sixteen. Some years you count the shoes. That year I were glad to be counting owt.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.