Laybys are steady providers and I've stopped questioning it — that line is in the notebook against this entry and it's done service as a general truth ever since. Left boot, brown, heavy sole, one lace present of two, against the kerb at the far end of the layby on the A62 up at Standedge. The far end is where layby shoes tend to present, in my experience, though I only offer that as pattern, not explanation. Explanation isn't my department.
A clear day, and the book makes a note of the long views into Lancashire, which you take when offered because Standedge doesn't offer them often. It's a top-of-the-world sort of road when it behaves. I had the flask on the bonnet — tea very good — with the lorries passing at intervals, and there's a particular pleasure in drinking tea in a layby while the traffic does its work behind you, though I accept it's not a pleasure everybody would recognise.
Four photographs, three came out, which for 2023 were about par and for 2010 would have been a miracle. I remember the wind being kinder than that road usually manages, though the notebook doesn't confirm it and after three years I'd not put money on the memory. What I'd put money on is what's written: left boot, brown, one lace of two, number 244, and Lancashire looking better than usual on account of the distance. The bag will have had summat in it an' all, but the book doesn't say what, so neither will I.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.