I've walked up Castle Hill more or less monthly since 1976 and it has given the register a shoe only a handful of times, which I've always thought showed a certain restraint on its part. This were one of the times. Child's plimsoll, left, navy, halfway up the path from Ashes Lane. Elastic sort, so no laces to record, and the notebook says so in exactly them words — 'no laces to record' — because a blank field wants explaining or it looks like carelessness.
Small. The canvas had gone chalky and the rubber were lifting at the heel, and I put it at a week or more out, though dating a plimsoll by its canvas is more art than science and I don't pretend otherwise. Children's shoes I record the same as any other and I don't dwell, because dwelling isn't recording.
What the notebook does dwell on is the morning, and fair enough. First proper one of the spring — clear right round, and you could see the Emley Moor mast plain as owt, which from Castle Hill on a good day is one of the sights this district offers free of charge. I photographed the plimsoll, had a Penguin sat on the bench near the tower, and came down. The entry ends 'some days that's the whole of it', and transcribing it now, two years on, I'd only add that days like that are the spine of the thing. The remarkable finds get the attention but the register is mostly made of mornings like this one, and I wouldn't have it otherwise.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.