Two from Castle Hill in one year. After the hill had managed next to nowt in the forty-odd years I'd been walking it, 2023 got a trainer out of it in March and then this — a left boot, brown, laces frayed, heel worn to a slant, on the path up from Lumb Lane. The notebook calls it a strong showing by its standards and that's the hill summed up fairly. It's not a producer. It's a place I go regardless, and twice in 2023 it happened to have summat for me, which I took as the coincidence it were rather than the start of owt. Rightly, as it turned out — it went quiet again after, and stayed quiet a good long while.
The heel worn to a slant is the detail I'd draw attention to. A slanted heel means the boot were walked in a particular way for a long time before it ever reached that path, and that's a fact about the boot's past I'm allowed, because the boot is showing it. What I'm not allowed is the rest, and I didn't take it.
Bitter wind at the top and I didn't stop up there — noted, photographed, and down again inside the hour, which the book records without apology because December on that hill doesn't negotiate. The flask stayed in the car and I were glad of it when I got back down, hands the colour of the boot. The photograph came out despite the light, which in December were an achievement worth its clause in the entry. Number 261, the year's next-to-last, and the hill I've climbed since 1976 finally having its best year at my time of asking. I make nowt of it. But it went in the book with a bit of extra care.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.