I'll deal with the Emley business first, because certain forum people dealt with it at the time and I'd rather the record were straight. Yes, this boot were found in the hollow off the ridge path near Emley, which is the same general ground as the boot of October 2017 — the one I investigated as a possible Heckmondwike, and it wasn't the one, and that's all been said. Two boots in the same hollow seven years apart is not a pattern. It's a hollow. Things fetch up in hollows; that's what hollows are for. I recorded this one as an ordinary find because it were an ordinary find, and I'd record a third the same way, though I'd admit to raising an eyebrow at a third.
Right boot, black. Laces in, untied, and the upper cracked right across the toe — a boot well past its working life. Blustery day, and the mast wires were singing above, which if you've stood under Emley Moor mast in a wind you'll know, and if you haven't it's worth the trip on its own account. It's a sound like the sky humming and the notebook records it every time I'm up there, because it earns it.
I ate both rounds of cheese and pickle in the lee of the wall, the wind having made the open ridge a poor dining room. Five photographs, three came out — the wind again, or me hands in it. The boot were left as found, and as far as I know it's there yet, cracking quietly in its hollow, an ordinary boot on ordinary ground, whatever the forum says.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.