284 The wind of Long Mynd

Reaching the top of Long Mynd in rural Shropshire requires a good steady climb. The rocky footpath winds up and up, and so must you, if you want to get to the top. Most people do, as much for that sense of physical achievement gained over an hour or two, as the views. 360 degree panoramic views of all that makes this whole area so special. But before you get to those views, there are many other fascinating sights to be had on the way up. And not only for the eyes.  Long Mynd is both a wild place and an area only lightly impacted by overflights. Once you are within the dramatic contours of this ancient landscape it is likely you'll encounter periods of near pristine quiet. Pristine quiet activates something fascinating in us, something we normally can't engage. Heightened aural awareness. Heightened aural awareness lets us fully connect with the landscape via our sense of hearing.  Hearing is a kind of touch sense. While we can feel the wind as it buffits against our faces and bodies, we are thanks to the wind, able to perceive trees and grasses even though they may be a hundred yards away. Wind presses through their physical shapes and structures producing sound vibrations that then physically land on our eardrums. It's like we are touching them, even though they are beyond the reach of our hands.  The higher you go up Long Mynd, the more you and the landscape are exposed to the elements. The wind surges stronger and stronger. Where the narrow and very steep footpath threads along the edge of rocks and a plummeting drop, the wind cannot be ignored. It is physical, and it is enlivening. It enlivens us, and it enlivens the trees and grasses. the birds. The hardy sheep as they graze the upland pasture. The tiny grasshoppers and crickets, only heard when the wind drops.   * We made this recording up on Long Mynd back in August. It's perhaps our most precipitous recording location so far! We carefully attached the box to a dramatic hawthorn tree overhanging one of the many sheer drops, just off the footpath. Hikers can be heard passing up and down the stony path. Right of scene the wild landscape slopes steeply up. Left of scene slopes steeply down into the valley below. Centre scene are trees on the opposite side of the cleft. Sheep graze on steep ground below the tree for a while, and a raven or large crow briefly passes. We think there's a stone chat there too. It's very difficult to capture sound landscapes in the face of such powerful wind gusts, but the wind really is the very essence of this wild place, and so we've made an extra effort to sonically balance the hugely varying loudness levels in this recording and share what we hope is a listenable sound view of Long Mynd in beautiful Shropshire.

Robin Hood's Bay on the North Yorkshire coast feels remote for England. It lies at the bottom of a very steep road that descends down from the road between Whitby and Scarborough. The sign at the top of the village warns sightseers interested in a look not even to try driving down. With virtually no traffic noise and the whole area under a quiet sky, we knew this was a good place for the Lento microphones. The lane (we walked, obviously) winds very steeply down, passes a few little shops, a pub, a grocery shop with a jar part filled with fizzy drink to catch the wasps, and ends in a ramp onto the beach. Perfect waves break. Perfect because every detail can be heard cleanly, and precisely. No road or plane noise to get in the way.  Robin Hood's Bay was not actually our final resting point. For this we needed to walk about a quarter of a mile over the sand to the Youth Hostel at Boggle Hole. Delightfully named. Perfectly located.  Access across the beach is only possible when the tide is out. You know you're close when you reach a rocky stream that flows down from the cliffs. The last stretch, harder work. The stream is not walking boots friendly, uneven stepping stones look fun but need a confidence to use.  The Youth Hostel is tranquil. It really has the most peaceful surroundings of anywhere we've ever stayed. Above the hostel is a wooded area rich with rustling trees. As night approached we followed a tiny footpath up in between the trees. They swayed and hushed in the onshore breeze flowing up from the beach. We found a tree with a good trunk and tied the Lento box on to capture the sound of the night. * This section of time is captured in the woods above the Youth Hostel. It's from 3am, early August. Weather conditions are warm and dry, with moderate winds gusting to strong. Dark bush crickets live amongst the trees. They can be heard all through the night. They can, if you feel like it, provide something nice to count, like sheep, to help you get to sleep.

The environment within the cabin of a sleeper train is, well, unusual. Quite contradictory. It feels empty when you first step in, but full seconds later. It has a dead quiet feel, whilst also being noisy. It affords little physical space to move about in, yet anything you accidentally drop ends up out of reach. It would feel claustrophobic too if it weren't also strangely spatial when the lights are out. It has bareness and simplicity that somehow affords comfort. And the cabin often rocks about, as do you. The sound-feel within the cabin is unusual too. To start with there's rumble. Rumblings that roll constantly while the train is in motion. Sudden low frequency thuds and judders, as the carriages roll over joints and points in the track. There are regular pressure bumps in the internal air caused by trains passing close by in the opposite direction, and multiple strong humming sounds from the air conditioning and electric motors operating the train. Delicate sounds too. Tiny creaks and subtle shiftings in the fabrics and panelling that line the cabin, especially the ceiling which is made of flexible sound-absorbing slats.  To be conducive to sleep you'd have thought the cabin ideally needs none of this. Yet there is  an intense stillness. And during your considerable time in the cabin, twelve hours and more, these aural qualities interact, and form into their own rhythms. The mental chemistry of it all reacts to produce soporific calm. Set against my knees (as I slept) and the side wall of the cabin, with no inches to spare and bed clothes pushed up all around which would normally scupper any spatial recording, the Lento box recorded as the "night" began. Sleeping on a sleeper train is not like any normal night of course. The whole world around you is moving, rocking, as is everything in the soundscape. And yet you get your head into the comfortable hinged pillow (the back half goes up forming a bump protector) and you enter into a long aurally enhanced doze, that may, if you are lucky, become proper sleep.  Listening back the Lento box captured a true impression of being in a sleeper train cabin. Including occasional bed covers shifting and one of us popping out of the cabin briefly which is all part and parcel of the sound experience. This passage of time is somewhere between 3am and 4am. The train is speeding steadily across France, passing through lamplit towns and cities as it rolls on through the night. (It's hard to resist sleeping with the window blind part rolled up so you can witness these truly marvellous scenes.) The journey on this SNCF service is over 850km, departing Cerbere station on the extreme southern coast of France at 1850hrs, arriving Paris Gare d'Austerlitz at breakfast time the next morning. >> We've just shared three minutes of video of the train gliding through the night. Watch on our YouTube. 

Beside the only road leading out of Sant Llorenc de la Muga we found a small group of trees. We didn't have much time. The sky was pitch black and the ground beneath our feet was streaming with water that'd all come down a few minutes ago in a deluge with simultaneous flashes of forked lightening so powerful, so bright, they'd temporarily frozen us to the spot. We shone our torch from tree to tree, searching for a suitable trunk that might provide some shelter for the Lento box. The road was deserted. Traffic was not an issue. Only one more village lay beyond, where the road literally ended.      A patch of bare trunk came into view between rain soaked leaves. Around us every thing glistened. And dripped. Every shrub. Every branch. Every leaf.  To the eyes and to the ears it was a rich sparkling sensory experience, that seemed interchangeable. Reaching through we tied the Lento box onto the trunk, angled it onto the wide landscape scene, and left it to record alone through the night.  This segment of time was captured from just before 3am to just after 4am. Heavy rain falls and the sky periodically grumbles with thunder, but eventually it eases off. To the right of scene one and sometimes more tiny beeps can be heard from time to time. We aren't sure what creatures make these delicately fleeting sounds. Frogs perhaps, lizards, or insects? The sounds are both soft and yet very distinguishable in the soundscape, and comforting for some curious reason. The medieval clock on the church of Sant Llorenc strikes the quarters and the hours through the night. Ancient bells seem even more enchanting when heard in the dead of night, and through crystal clear rain.

Our friends told us that in Sant Llorenc the weather changes towards the end of August. Endless days of thick summer heat gives way to something altogether more dramatic. Ominous black clouds the size of cities. Rain drops like translucent grapes. Fork lightening like you see at the cinema. Thunder, that carves open the sky, like unimaginably huge boulders crashing downwards from the high mountain peaks.  We followed the river Muga out of Sant Llorenc, into the valley beyond. Our aim was to reach a reservoir which we thought may be a good place to leave the Lento box to make an overnight recording. Eventually, along rough tracks surrounded by dense trees and noisy cicadas, we reached the water. Our way however was blocked. Two white horses.  Impressive creatures. Standing astride the track. They had their backs towards us. We stopped, and watched, and kept our distance. Despite facing the other way the horses knew we were there. In low voices we shared ideas on what to do, whilst continuing to watch. Both stood firm. They were expressing only the smallest of movements through their tails.  Some time passed. It felt like they were communicating something to us. But what? The valley with all its assorted cicadas seemed, somehow, to have fallen silent. We decided not to try to pass them. Something perhaps in the way they moved their tails said turn back. So we turned back. Returning along the track we entered an area of the valley where the shallow river sounded unusually sonorous. The way the water tumbled over the rocks. the depth, and the particular arrangement of the trees. Just off the track a tree looked down into the gorge, so we tied the lento box to it. It was the perfect place for it to record. Perhaps, if we could have read the tails of the horses, this was what they were trying to say. Record back where you've come. Where it's sheltered. And where the river wrills. There's a storm. Coming.

For this second August intermission we've once again brought together multiple recordings made across a location to share as one very long non-stop piece.  This episode is our second ever "Lento Long". Three hours of spatial sound landscape captured from the Kielder Forest in Northumberland in the North East of England near to the Scottish border. It may all be sleep safe, depending on your own personal sensitivities to bird song which is prominent throughout the first 90 minutes. The latter 90 minutes is captured quiet from the night.  Here's a guide to what you'll hear. - The episode opens with a daytime sound-view from an avenue of tall firs situated east of the giant Kielder reservoir. Banks of fresh morning air is pressing through the firs in soft hushing undulations, and bright birds are singing from everywhere.        - At 49 minutes you seamlessly travel over the water by five miles to the south west of the reservoir, to a densely forested area just below the Kielder Observatory. It's afternoon. The woodland ambience is alive with a white noise haze created by a clean rushing stream, countless willow warblers, and gentle surges of rich brown noise created as banks of wind filter through Grandis Firs some tall as 15 storey buildings. - At 1 hour 36 minutes this Kielder day becomes Kielder night. Returning to the same peaceful location you were east of the reservoir, this time to experience the sound-view of the reservoir at night. Those pristine hours before dawn, when only owls and echoes roam the spaces between the trees, velvety hushes of rich brown noise waft down from avenues of tall fir trees, and nocturnal geese can be heard flying far out over the ink black water. The episodes we blended together to make this Lento Long are 257, 247, 222 and 240, where you can read in detail about each location. * Lento resumes a weekly service of captured quiet from new places in September. We have some gorgeous new locations to share with you! Thanks to everyone for listening. 

It's August intermission time! This year we've decided to bring together recordings from more than one location in a specific geographic area and share them as a long non-stop episode.  This is our first ever "Lento Long" at 3 hours. A chance to aurally travel across a geographic area and experience it from different perspectives. Depending on your own personal sensitivities to human made sound, it may be sleep safe. Children can distantly be heard playing on the beaches, and at just over an hour a microlight gradually drones over. For us this creates a wonderful sense of beach-time, where nothing in the world feels urgent anymore, but not everyone may respond in the same way so we haven't officially labelled this Lento Long as *sleep safe*. Here's a guide to what you'll hear. - The first hour is from the edge of the rocky beach at Lilstock in West Somerset, your back lent against a comfortable tree as the waves wash left to right with the longshore drift.  - At one hour this blends into the rarified ambience of Kilve beach at low tide, a soundscape carried into awareness with the gradual progression of a little microlight that slowly drones over high above. - At one hour thirty, day becomes night. A weatherfront is passing over a remote cottage half way up West Quantoxhead. Fresh currents of Somerset air press freely through a bank of trees behind the cottage, setting their leaves and branches swaying, and hushing in richly undulating white noise.  - At just after two hours thirty, you invisibly reappear, sitting beside a secluded stream farther up the hill. You're listening to the pristine sound of water flowing off the top of West Quantoxhead, with the gentle company of two resting sheep nearby.  The episodes we blended together to make this Lento Long are 244, 254, 248, 255 and 249, where you can read in detail about each location. They were all recorded in late October 2024. We'll release another Lento Long next week and resume the weekly service from the start of September. Thanks to everyone for listening.

This week we're returning to Shelve Wood in Shropshire to witness another hour from the unaccompanied overnight capture we made in June. This section of time includes the effects of a strong weather front. It sweeps over the dense woodland, creating rich spatial waves of naturally occurring white, brown and grey noise.  Because the Lento box spent the whole night alone immersed within the forest, recording in high definition binaural sound, by listening back with headphones or Airpods we're able to aurally locate ourselves within Shelve Wood itself. Become aural witnesses. Hearing as if we are there, how time passed, surrounded by the trees. the sense of space. How each tree responds in its own unique way to the wind. And the rain drops, that find their way all the way down through the thick firs, to land on the forest floor.  * This section of time is from the early hours of the morning. The fir tree that held the Lento box was impressively tall. The Lento box captures the acoustical space of the forest facing outwards from the trunk, five feet (human height) above the ground. It's a vast reverberant zone that apart from the tree trunks, is essentially an empty space between the soft cushion of the forest floor and the ceiling of dense fir needles twenty feet above. In this zone the natural noises of the forest travel over long distances. 

It's not often we record from the back garden. The spot is suburban. Grassy and full of tangled shrubs yes, and encircled by a sprawling wisteria too that visually at least gives a verdantly self contained feel. But foliage while beguiling the eye does not strain out the roads and street sounds of the city. Or the sky. Flight paved, plane lined, jet rumbled. No, quiet is never in abundance here.  At the end of last week, after a long run of bone dry conditions, the day came when rain was forecast. As day turned to dusk, the sky that'd been different shades of blue for so long, turned an opaque grey. The dark did not bring cool. If anything the air gained heat. As we set up the Lento box to record, the air moved around our bare arms and legs like warm weightless water. We could almost feel with our skin how the rain was starting to form. We left the box alone on the grass, by the wisteria, to record all night. A night of half conscious dreams of rain, pounding on the roof. Of liberally flowing water. Of a loudly chortling drain. Of dawn birds singing through aural mists of green things dripping. Listening back, witnessing the passage of time when the first rain began to fall, what struck us most was how delicious the first rain felt. Perhaps it's joy. The plants at last are having a drink. As time passes, other feelings come about. This is good rain. Heavy rain. Quenching rain. The birds will be able to bathe in shallow puddles gathered between roofs, and the world will sparkle, clean, when the light comes. But what we also gained from a long listen to this section of time, was the transition. How different the environment sounds and feels towards the end. Echoes and a pleasant sheen of aural silkyness. And endless things dripping. And what we didn't expect to hear, bees starting their days from the very first rays of daylight. And hints of swifts screaming overhead. 

A bright April day has dawned in Derbyshire earlier in the spring. The air is unusually still for this time of year and this upland location. At just under a thousand feet barely a breeze is ruffling the trees surrounding the mics. These are the same trees that can be heard so powerfully in episode 250 - Moorland trees in mid-winter gales.  Far across the valley, stretching from far left to far right of scene, a country road threads its way over the moors. It links the small Derbyshire town of Whaley Bridge to the busier Cheshire town of Macclesfield about seven miles away. Due to a major land slip and road closure on the next valley, there is less traffic, though you can hear occasional cars threading the tarmac way through the landscape from time to time.   Mid left down the field, a woodpecker. In the same copse, a song thrush. From different points in the mid-distance seesawing great tits. Wrens too, and wood pigeons, and a chif chaf, and a pheasant.  Deep in the valley, geese can be heard over the reservoir. What made this segment of the overnight recording feel special though was the blackbird.  As time passes the blackbird lands on a branch of the apple tree directly above the Lento box, and sings so sonorously. And then does it again, as if it knows how special it is to witness a singing blackbird so close.