First of the year, and I weren't out looking especially. I've walked up Castle Hill more or less monthly since 1976 and a January walk up there is just what I do, shoe or no shoe. That morning there were one. Right trainer, black, laces in but loose, on the grass bank below the tower, ten yards off the path. The notebook has the ground firm with frost, which made for decent walking, and I remember that being true — one of them mornings where the mud is set solid and you can go where you like.
The notebook records flask conditions good, tea keeping its heat to the bottom of the cup, and the photographs coming out well enough for January light, which is faint praise but honest. Condition of the trainer were fair, some wear at the heel. I left it as it were and came down the Lumb Lane side, which the notebook also records, because which way you come down matters to the shape of a morning even if it matters to nobody else.
Reading it back now, what strikes me is that this were the opening entry of the biggest year the register has ever had. Thirty-one shoes in 2022, and it started with one I nearly walked past on a hill I'd been up hundreds of times. I've no explanation for the year and I've not looked for one. But I'm glad it opened at Castle Hill. If you'd asked me in 2009 where the register would like to start its best year, I'd have said there.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.