Easter Monday, which is not a day I'd usually choose for Digley — bank holidays fill the dam wall with folk, and folk are fine, but they do stand where you want to photograph. The notebook is honest about it: more people about than I'd have picked, but the shoe were fresh by the look of it and I'm glad I went when I did, because a fresh shoe on a busy path doesn't always see the week out. Some get moved. Not by me. You can't interfere, but not everybody holds to that.
Right trainer, blue, laces tied, sat square on the flat of the dam wall. Square is the word the notebook uses and it's the right one — not dropped, not tipped, sat square, the way a thing sits when it's sat rather than fallen. I recorded that and nowt more about it, as is the practice.
Sunny, with a cold wind off the water, which is Digley in April all over. I waited out two family groups before photographing, which the notebook logs without complaint because there weren't a complaint — waiting is most of this work if you do it properly. Flask were right. Condition of the trainer very good, hardly a mark on it, and the notebook makes the observation that a shoe with nowt wrong with it is always slightly harder to write up than a worn one. Four years on I can confirm that still holds. Wear is information. A perfect shoe keeps its own counsel.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.