The bridleway out of Emley towards the mast, and you can see half of Yorkshire from up there when it's clear. It were clear. Left boot, brown, ankle sort, laces present but loose, up against the field edge.
Now, the notebook records that I checked this one against the folder, and I'll explain that without making more of it than it deserves. Since 2015 I've kept a folder on a reported shoe in the Heckmondwike area — reported by others, never confirmed by me, and that's all I'll say about it here, because unconfirmed means unconfirmed. Emley's near enough that direction that a brown boot wants checking as a matter of routine. I checked. It weren't anything of that sort. Just a good ordinary boot, and I mean that as a compliment. The register is built on good ordinary boots.
Noted, photographed, left where it lay. The photograph came out with the mast in the background, which I didn't plan but didn't mind. Flask at the field edge looking out at the view. What the sandwiches were the notebook doesn't say, and I couldn't tell you now. It'll have been whatever Linda had done, which has never once let me down in seventeen years of this, and that wants saying more often than I say it.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.