The notebook gives nearly as much space to the bridge as to the shoe on this one, and I'll not apologise for it, because the Scammonden bridge from underneath is a remarkable thing and most folk only ever see it from the top at seventy mile an hour. The bridleway passes right beneath the carriageway, and the traffic above makes a steady noise you soon stop noticing, which the notebook records and which I remember — a sort of weather, but man-made.
The trainer were against the east abutment. Left trainer, grey, lace in on one side only, which is an arrangement I've seen a handful of times over the years and it always gets noted precisely, because half-laced is its own category as far as I'm concerned. Condition fair. Dry day, and cooler under the span, the way it always is — that much concrete keeps its own climate.
I had the stool, and the notebook admits I sat longer than the shoe strictly warranted, but the spot invites it, and I've come to trust the notebook when it's honest like that. Flask conditions good. Four photographs — two of the shoe and two of the underside of the bridge for context, and I stand by the context photographs. A grey trainer against that abutment, with the whole M62 going over the top of it unawares, is the kind of record this register exists to hold. Thousands of people passed within thirty feet of number 223 that morning. One of them stopped. That's the job.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.