The conduit path at Deer Hill, above Meltham. Right shoe, black leather, lying in the drain beside the path. Four eyelets, no laces, and the heel worn down on the outside edge, which I recorded because heel wear is worth recording — it's one of the few things a shoe will tell you plainly.
The notebook says the weather were raw with a wind off the moor, and flask conditions are marked poor on account of that wind. There's no shelter to speak of along the conduit and anybody who's poured tea up there in February will know what the notebook means. I remember the wind at Deer Hill in a general way, being as it's always there, but I couldn't swear to remembering that particular day.
The photograph didn't come out. That happened a lot in them years and I've never let it trouble me — the notebook is the record, the photograph is extra. So there's no picture of the Deer Hill shoe, just the entry, which tells you everything I knew about it, which were enough.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.