Laybys are reliable ground and I've never understood why more people don't check them. I've said it before and the notebook says it again here, word for word near enough, so evidently I felt it wanted repeating. This were the layby on the A62 going up towards Standedge, which I pull into on principle whenever I'm passing with time in hand.
Left trainer, white gone grey, wedged against the kerb stones. Laces frayed at both ends, which is a specific sort of wear — not snapped, frayed — and I noted it as such. Fair condition under the road dirt, and road dirt is its own category: a layby shoe carries it differently to a moor shoe, more of a film than a soaking. Overcast, dry, mild for March, and nowt else to say about the weather, which is sometimes how March goes.
I didn't have a sit-down. Traffic noise takes the pleasure off it, and there's no arguing with the A62 on that stretch — it's wagons for the most part, and they don't let up. So it were photographs, notes, and back in the car, which is the layby method and there's no shame in it. Two photographs taken and one came out, and the one that came out is a fair likeness. The flask stayed in the bag until Marsden, where I drank it looking at the moor rather than the carriageway, which I'd recommend to anybody. A workmanlike entry. The register needs them the same as it needs the memorable ones — more, if anything.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.