You stop hearing the M62 after a bit, up above Scammonden Water. I've written that in the notebook more than once over the years and it went in again with this one. Right trainer, black with a white flash on the side, laces gone, sole worn right through at the ball of the foot. On the path above the water. Dry day, high cloud.
A worn-through sole is worth dwelling on, because it means the shoe did its work before it got here. That's not speculation about how it arrived, which I don't do — it's observation of the shoe itself, which is the whole job. This one had been walked in properly, and there's a dignity in that.
I gave it twenty minutes and a Penguin. Flask conditions good. The photograph came out grainy but honest, which is how the notebook has it and I'd not improve on the phrasing. Scammonden's a funny spot — the motorway's right there, thousands of folk a day going over the dam, and none of them knowing there's a register being kept twenty yards off. I don't mean owt by that. It's just the sort of thought you have with a flask on a hillside, and the notebook shows I had it.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.