Last shoe of 2012, and the year that started at Lock 23E finished one lock up at 24E, which I'd like to say were deliberate, but it weren't. Right trainer, grey, laces in, frost on the toe, on the lock beam side of the towpath below 24E at Slaithwaite.
Hard frost, first of the winter, and the notebook calls it a crackin' clear morning after all that rain, which after the summer we'd had it were entitled to say. Frost on the toe is the kind of detail you can only record if you get there early, and I did, because I always set off at half seven and that morning it paid.
The photograph come out, and I've still got it — grainy, but the frost reads. Fourteen this year, the entry finishes, which is the first time the notebook counts its own year up. The fourteenth were a good one to end on, and the walk back along the frozen towpath were as good as any I had all year.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.