Return Visits
2 gone · 9 looked in on · none of them removed from the register
I get asked whether I take a shoe out of the register once it has gone. I do not, and I will explain why, because it comes up often enough to be worth setting down.
The register records what were there. It does not claim what is there now. If I went through taking entries out every time a shoe stopped being somewhere, it would not be a register any more, it would be a stock list, and a stock list of lone shoes is no use to anybody. They keep their numbers. Number 153 is number 153 and always will be.
In seventeen year I have been back and found two of them gone. Both are below, with what were there instead, which in one case were nowt and in the other were a crisp packet. Under them I have put some others I have been back to, or been past, or meant to look at and did not, because a return visit is worth recording either way and in some cases the not looking is the only thing I have got to report.
Shoes go. That is the ordinary run of things and it does not want dressing up.
Gone on the return visit
#153
4 May 2019 · Left brogue, dark browngone on return visit
Moorland track above Meltham
I went back on the twenty-fifth of May, three week after, to see how it were getting on. It were not there. I walked both sides of the track a fair way in each direction, in case the wind had had it, and there were nothing, not so much as a flattened bit of grass where it had sat. There were a sheep stood at the bend and nowt else. I come home and marked it lost, and it keeps its number.
#193
8 August 2021 · Left sandal, browngone on return visit
Canal path, Milnsbridge
I went back on the twenty-second of August, a fortnight on, which I do with the canal ones. The edging stones were bare. There were a crisp packet in the water against the stones and a fair amount of duckweed with it, and I looked into the water a good while in case the sandal had gone in, and either it had not or I could not see it for the weed. I noted the return visit and the weather, which were fair both days, and left it at that.
Both keep their numbers. They are in the register where they always were, with the date I last stood in front of them.
Ones I have been back to
What the trip report says, and then what I would add to it now.
#1
17 October 2009 · Right boot, brown
Field gateway near Marsden
I went back to that gateway once, a good few years after. Made a morning of it, took the flask. There were nothing there, just the gate and the mud and the wall, and that were fine.
I never went up expecting a boot to still be stood there after all that time. The gateway is still a gateway and the wall is still the wall. In the May of 2025 there were a different shoe in it altogether, which is number 296, further down this page.
#78
9 May 2015 · Left boot, brown
Wessenden Head path, above Marsden
That boot will be long gone now, or else it's still there and weathered past recognising. I've walked that path plenty of times since and never knowingly passed it again, but I'd not swear it weren't there.
I have been along that path a great many times since 2015 and I have never once seen it. That is not the same as it not being there. A brown boot on a brown moor is a hard thing to find on purpose, never mind by accident.
#136
30 June 2018 · Left boot, brown
Dam path, Scammonden Water
I've been back past since and the path is unchanged, which at Scammonden is somehow reassuring, the motorway above changes by the minute and the path doesn't change at all.
I go past Scammonden three or four times a year. I could not tell you when the boot stopped being on the dam path, only that at some point it did. The path has not altered in any respect.
#156
15 June 2019 · Right boot, brown
Leeds and Liverpool Canal towpath, near Skipton
It were still there, which I were glad of, because three hours of driving to an empty towpath is a long way to carry a flask for nothing, and I've done it before on worse tip-offs.
Strictly that is a confirmation and not a return, but it belongs here: reported on the Tuesday, still sat there on the Saturday. I have not been back to Skipton since and I do not expect to. It is the far end of what I will drive.
#185
13 March 2021 · Right trainer, blue
Blackmoorfoot Reservoir
I've been past Blackmoorfoot plenty of times since and I couldn't tell you now whether it were still there on any of them, because I didn't note it, and what isn't noted is gone.
I could have looked. I did not look, or else I looked and did not write it down, which comes to the same thing in the end.
#220
11 June 2022 · Right trainer, white
Ginnel off Knowl Road, Golcar
You can't interfere; the shoe stayed exactly where it were, tongueless, and for all I know it's there yet.
I have been up that ginnel since, on my way to somewhere else, and I did not think to look until I were at the top of it. It may well still be there. I am not going to go and check now, because then I would have to write down what I found.
#266
24 February 2024 · Right trainer, grey
Verge of A638, near Dewsbury bus station
It were still there Saturday morning, which counts in a shoe's favour, two days on a main road verge and nobody had shifted it.
Two days on the A638 with the buses going past is more than most of them manage. Barry rang on the Thursday and stood by his car on the Saturday while I photographed it.
#274
10 August 2024 · Left trainer, white
Rigby Woods, near Slaithwaite
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.
I went back up to that wood again in the August of 2026 and it were not there, and you will see it is not marked lost, because by then I had stood in front of it on the pavement outside Boots in town. There is an oval in the leaf mould where it sat, packed flat, and I found it first go. The filing on that one is not settled. I have left it looking wrong because it is wrong.
#296
10 May 2025 · Right shoe, black
Field gateway near Marsden
On the tenth of May 2025 I went back to the field gateway near Marsden, where number 1 were, October 2009. I go past the gateway now and then, the way you'd look in on a relative. This were different. This were planned the night before, map out on the table, sandwiches decided in advance.
I went for the gateway and not for a shoe, and there were a shoe in the gateway, which I want to be clear I had not arranged. The best part of sixteen year between the two of them, in the same gap in the same wall.
That is the lot of them. Two gone, and the rest either still there, or gone without me seeing it happen, or never looked at properly, which I have put down honestly enough.
If you know of one out of the register that has gone, you are welcome to write and tell me when you last saw it. I will note the date you give me in the margin. I will not be taking the entry out.
See also: the places, the register, questions I am asked.