The find of the year, and I said so in the register at the time and I'll say it here. I first heard of this one in July 2024, off a walking forum — a poster described a white trainer in Rigby Woods, near Slaithwaite, sitting upright, and something in the description made me want to see it sooner rather than later. It took till the tenth of August to get up there, what with the merchant's and one thing and another, and the whole of July I half expected a message saying it had gone. It hadn't.
Left trainer, white — off-white by the time I got to it, the woods having had a go at the colour. Size seven. And here is the detail the notebook gives three lines to, which for the notebook is a paragraph: the lace were on the left side only, threaded through three eyelets and stopping there, and the whole thing were sitting upright as if set down deliberate. I want to be careful with 'deliberate' because I don't speculate — it describes how the shoe sat, not how it came to sit there. Them are different things and the register keeps them different.
I had brought the stool, having had a feeling about it, and the feeling were as right as it has ever been. I sat half an hour. Still morning, warm under the trees, the wood doing its quiet business around us. Took fourteen photographs, which is a lot for me — most shoes get four or five and are well served by them — but it were that sort of shoe, and every angle seemed to have summat the last one hadn't.
I went back in October and it were still there, upright, the leaves starting to come down around it, and I noted the return visit in the register for completeness. Then I left it as found, same as always. Some shoes you record and move on from. This one I recorded and have not entirely moved on from, and I'm content to leave the entry there.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.