Radio Lento podcast

High on a Derbyshire moor below the summit of Black Hill, between Disley and Whaley Bridge, there's an ancient trackway. It runs almost level across boggy ground with views over rough pastures and gritstone walls to a lone standing stone. After about half a mile the track descends sharply into a tree-lined dell. Nestled in amongst a wood, there's a small farmhouse mostly hidden from view. It was, more than a lifetime ago, in 1898 the home of Carl Fuchs, a distinguished cellist, who played in the Halle Orchestra and the Brodsky quartet. At the point where the gorse bushes are, where the path narrows and sinks below the gritstone walls, and the deep ruts get deeper, the traveller hears water. A babbling beck, waiting to cast its spell. A sonorous moorside stream that has to be forded, on tip toe, over exposed rocks. In his memoir, Carl Fuchs when working in the stream, once told travellers that the water was safe to drink. Clear, and from the mountain. Being within a natural cutting, overgrown with straggly trees, its sound is amplified. Shaped by the action of water over rocks, and conducted by gravity, the beck rills the air, as it has for centuries. The deep rocky pool into which the water tumbles, sings watery notes. Colourful, resonant, vibrant. We pushed through the undergrowth and left the microphones to record overnight, downstream of the pool. Time passes. Tiny flurries of rain fall onto the sheltering leaves. The beck flows mellifluously, down and away into the wide open valley to the right. The vastness is sometimes revealed by a passing plane, or a car on a distant road. The birds are asleep. Nocturnal things hold their silence. The beck casts its spell.

All is still in the wood. It is mid-way through a barmy August night. There is no breeze to rustle the trees. Dark bush crickets trichit the passage of time on crickle-dry carpets of leaves. Carried clear over the surrounding fields, the bell of Saint Mary's church chimes one. It's this time, in between the small hours, when the landscape is farthest from light, that the balance between what is near and what is distant shifts and blurs. Cows low. Geese and ducks fly high overhead. The nocturnal noise of the distant A12 has thinned, become a panoramic drape around the wood sharpening what's heard within. Echoes. Of owls. Far off. They're on the other side. Dead branches drop. Thump the hollow ground from where a hidden creature silently emerges to nibble at leaves. Then, they come. The Tawnies. A male and a female, maybe more. They land on high treetop boughs. Cast trembling calls. Haunt the breezeless voids. Time passes. The wood rests. The clock strikes 2. This episode is now available as one of our unique sound cards. Keep one yourself as a momento of this episode or share with someone who might like it. All your contributions through Ko-fi help keep Lento on the air.

Through the bare limbed trees of Abney Park nature reserve in Hackney, London a song thrush sings sweetly. It's first light. The air and the microphones are frozen, left behind through a long night and its icy winds. Ivy hangs still, above the lion on the tomb. Abney Park is both a nature reserve and one of London's 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries. It's early, silky quiet. The park hasn't opened yet. The derelict chapel is an angular shadow beneath leafless trees. Footpaths lie empty, gravestones unread. Everything's waiting for the people to appear. Bathed in the soft city rumble, the softest it can be, the rooks see the light and caw from the treetops. Wood pigeons wake up. Robins stationed on branches one, two, three, brightly twistle strong melodies, mark their territories, all puffed up against the cold. Seagulls wheel in the wide open above the wood, and a sparse few planes rumble by, long haulers coming in, they must be, this being Christmas Day. With the gathering light comes the dazzling spacious song of wrens. A woodpecker. A fleeting murmur of passing geese. A hint of a breeze, a moment of shift in the ivy. And then of alerting birds and far off the sounds of people, a family, happy children and their dog. The first in. The first through the gate. The first to breathe the pure crisp air of Abney Park, on this fast brightening Christmas Day of 2020. [This episode was produced in collaboration with the Abney Park Cemetery Trust.]

It took several miles, over claggy east Hertfordshire footpaths and a waterlogged bridleway, to find a quiet field. A peaceful spot where the susurrations of the natural landscape outweigh that of the distant A10. To break our winter walk, we came off the bridleway and followed a babbling brook into a spindly thicket, where we left the microphones alone to record. The water's running steady. Rilling over dark stones, flowing in and out of small pools hidden under grass, from where a bit of bobbing wood spins and softly knocks. Above small birds flutter and chitter in the leafless trees and far off, seagulls. An old Land Rover splashes its way down the empty puddled lane. A lofty buzzard circles and droops its whistling call high over the nearby wood. Behind tails of wood smoke, jagged shapes of crows, leap and caw between the trees. Somewhere deep in Young Wood, a pheasant creaks. It's waiting for the dusk.

It is one of those bright-skied days when the clouds are moving faster than they should and you can hear the weight of the trees. A gale is sweeping the moorside, clearing down the dead wood. Sheltered inside an outcrop of trees, everything's in motion. What's loose is up and swirling, what's tethered bobs and waves. Banks of wind surge, roaring through the high treetops, bending hundred ton trunks that in turn lean, and straighten. Eddies are whirling down through the foliage, lifting tangled vines and rustling crisp leaves. Beyond the wood, sheep stoically graze, knee-deep in green grass. They're overseen by the cockerel crowing hard to be heard. Chickens poke and cluck over the rough ground by the farmhouse. Its roof appears and disappears behind rocking boughs. A tractor chugs by on the lane, its smoke dragged out flat from the chimney. Birds come and go, twittering and calling, unperturbed by the wind. Hill walkers clink a distant gate. Time to take it all in. To fill one's lungs and let a Derbyshire gale blow away the cobwebs.

It's the early hours of the morning. Shrouded under dark sky and cloud, the rain's falling heavily on the moor above the Whaley Bridge reservoir. It's dowsing the trees in this small wood, pouring and scattering through the waxy June leaves, filling the air with a springly spray of refreshing sound. The sheep and the lambs are asleep. The farmhouse over the field is a murky shadow beneath a haze of yesterday's wood smoke. The cockerel, the chickens and the dogs are silent. Only owls are there, somewhere in the inky dark, far echoes from another wood. It's a Derbyshire landscape, all hills and fields with gritstone walls and slopes that end in valleys. Time passes. The rain falls. And as it slowly eases to a patter and the last jets have ploughed their lazy ways down into Ringway airport, the owl comes close. Almost incredibly to a tree near where we left the microphones. A tawny owl, calling for its mate. It just appears. Its wings make no sound.

Tingling droplets still hanging in the air from the clearing mist, with not much daylight left, we finally managed to find a place to record. A lonely outcrop of oak trees beside the trackway, with a clear view of the surrounding landscape. Magpies circling. The spot had an interesting feel to it. We found later that the track dated back to the Iron Age and then became a roman road. Half a mile back down the track we stumbled upon a long overgrown airfield, a barn in a cluster of trees containing a memorial to the people stationed there. During WWII it was known as RAF Tempsford. Covert missions were deployed into occupied France. Now, from this little outcrop of trees, the air is ringing under low cloud with the sounds of today's bucolic contrasts. Of sounds near and far. Of harsh tchacking magpies and distantly mellifluous starlings. Of a loud croaky wood pigeon at roost in the tree, and of a pheasant making its creaky calls as it roams the nearby field. Of trains skimming the horizon on the mainline from London to Peterborough. And of a noisy farm vehicle as it rattles and splashes and bumps right past the microphones on the puddled trackway. Then by again. Grittily tracing its way back to the far field whence it came. It's a late November day, less than an hour to sunset. There's a horse, echoes of bird scarers from across the fields, and still a bee, buzzing by left to right between the leaf-bare trees. One for sorrow two for joy, three for a girl four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.

A bird calls out. Its cry carries far out over the water on this, a rare day of no wind. Not even a breeze or a whisper of leaves in the trees. Cows low from farmland on the floodplain beside the Thames Estuary. From a hidden nest, little birds flutter in and out. What planes there are pass softly, almost inaudibly, but just enough to reveal the vastness of the bright afternoon sky. It's hanging on, the light, longer for a late November day. Away from the footpath down a thick grassy slope we found the water, at rest between the tides. Shallow over boot stealing mud, it was mirroring the sky. A corner within the landscape of visceral stillness. Tiny bubbles are popping on the surface of the water. Almost too delicate to hear. We lower the tripod to get the microphones closer, then carry on with our walk to let them record alone. To the keen ear, murmurs waft in from out over the estuary of curlew, avocet and geese. Crows caw. A horse neighs. The air vibrates. This isn't just a pastoral landscape beside a wild estuary, it is edgeland too. On the western horizon, three perhaps four miles distant are tall cranes at work shifting containers. They place and drop, each makes a gentle roll of thunder. It's the London Gateway Port. The still water bubbles and pops. The little birds flutter back. Walkers clink the gate up by the field but this spot is well hidden from view. And what was that? Something plopped into the water. Or jumped out of it? Who knows, there was no one here to see.

Up in the hills about three miles from the mid-Wales village of Ceri, there's a stream. It runs down into the valley mostly parallel to a road. The landscape is largely uninhabited. It's a very peaceful spot. To make this recording we had to push through thick brambles and climb down into a dell where the stream flows bright and shallow over worn stones. Sheltered within steep banks ankle-deep with dry leaves and beneath budding trees, the stream flows with a crystal clear clarity. We left the microphones to record overnight (see also episodes 13 and 21). This is the hour from about 3 to 4am. All the birds are asleep, except for a pair of tawny owls that can be heard calling to each other at the beginning. Cars occasionally pass up on the road in front, a reminder that there is an outside world beyond the perfect stillness that exists within this hidden dell. It is rare to have captured the sound of nothing happening.

Where the Thames path draws level with the iconic towers of Canary Wharf on the south side of the river at Rotherhithe, we climb up and over the tide wall, then descend steep slippery wooden steps down onto an empty beach to find a place, to put the microphones. The tide is going out. Lazy waves lap and wash over the wet claggy mud. Flocks of squawking gulls scavenge along the shoreline. The air is humming with a city rumble. A vast panoramic vibration, silky, wide, like hearing the sky in sound. This area is a beating heart of global business, yet from this beach it's an astonishingly peaceful, even tranquil place. We are mid-way through another lockdown. A lone siren wavers along a distant road. Flagpoles rattle in a gentle breeze. A floating landing stage nearby rises and falls on the swell. Each time it knocks against its moorings in deep reverberant cluncks. It swings to and fro, like a slow pendulum. A tug boat gradually approaches from the west, then passes, ploughing its way east on the out-going tide. It's v-shaped bow wave rolls heavily towards the banks, then breaks past the microphones in surges of white wash. The gulls bob and leap.

Bonus episode to mark 10,000 Radio Lento downloads. This is a shorter but no-loud-noise version of episode 29 'Trains planes and estuary birds'. Now in high definition sound, this an opportunity to hear the evocative sounds of the Thames Estuary at low tide, without the noisy aircraft which was included in the original episode. Since starting the podcast, we've covered 142 miles on foot with our children and the microphone gear, listening out for peaceful places to record. We don't have a car, so travel out of the city where we live on public transport. Trains can often be heard in our recordings, as they can in this one. It's a cloudy late August afternoon on the banks of the Thames Estuary near Benfleet in Essex. Wild gusts of wind race in over the water. Birds swoop and swirl over the exposed mudflats, hunting for food. Redshanks, gulls, little egrets, oyster catchers, curlew, avocet, crows. When the wind drops, the newly exposed mud and silt can be heard bubbling and popping in the drying air.

On the edge of the Bayford Pinetum in rural Hertfordshire, in view of the surrounding farmland, there's a young birch tree, growing in a secluded hollow. In early September the foliage here was humming with late season bees, feeding on ivy. Now in late October, the land is rain sodden and the dell is flooded waist deep. Rooks caw and kaah, from high in the treetops. The air is alive with the watery sibilances of rushing winterbournes. Flocks of jackdaws tchack tchack over the claggy brown fields, ploughed over since our last visit. The occasional train slides smoothly through the forest, on the line that links Hertford North with London. Propeller planes hum over on their weekend flights. Jets pass, muffled in the cloud. High leaves rustle gently in the cool autumn breezes. They haven't got long to fall.

Night has fallen over the Forest of Dean. In the clearing where we left the microphones, the cool nocturnal air has begun to echo with the calls of tawny owls. Cars passing on the distant forest road hush like banks of wind through the high tree tops. Down on the forest floor, hidden beneath the twisted vines, a stream is revealed. Its watery eddies sparkle brightly through the darkness, reflected and amplified by the broad leaves above. When there's no light in a forest everything sounds different. Sharper. What was close, is closer. Reverberant. What was far, is farther away. But between the echoes, there is silence. Between the tree trunks, branches crack, a creature squeals, a distant dog barks. Murmurs of murmurs seep through from the outside world. Falling softly on the gnarly bark of this ancient tree, in this giant forest where the owls live, these are the sounds of the night-time passing.

Tucked behind buildings, encircled by busy roads in the borough of Hackney in London, there's Abney Park. It's one of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries of London with marble-topped tombs half hidden by vines. It is a designated nature reserve protecting a rich ecological environment. Locals nip in, to take their dogs for a walk, to clear their heads and to get lost on its winding paths. It's home too for a rich variety of birds, including green parrots. Planted as an exotic arboretum in 1840, there are around 200 trees, some still remain from that first planting. It's a mild October day, and the rain is falling. Everything is being drenched. After a long time walking under dripping canopy we find a spot for the microphones. Set back from the path it's a small leafy hollow, bisected by a diagonal spur growing out of an old oak. The rain is falling heavier now, sifting down in waves down through the branches, pattering onto millions of waxy leaves. These old trees are bathing in it. They're pushing away the noise of the city, and sheltering the tranquillity of Abney Park under their boughs.

While we went off to explore along the river banks of the Crouch, we left the microphones behind to record on the windowsill of a derelict shed just inside the deserted marina on the leeside of the prevailing wind. As time passes, yacht masts set shaking in the wind ring out, some like bells. Taught lines whistle. Restless halyards knock and settle. A redshank, some cawing crows, impatient gulls and a curlew. There are starlings too, perched on the power lines. A late foraging bee, a propeller plane, and some distant motorbikes on the B1010. It's afternoon, but a cockerel makes it sound like morning. Two dogs bark distantly while two men tinker in a nearby shed beside some dry-landed rocked-over boats. A jet plane softly rumbles out to sea, far above the marina. There's a flag near to this shed. In the wind it is restless, flapping and furling and unfurling.

Night has come, and owls, to clear the slate. In this wonderful old wood the August air is still and filled with brightly chirping crickets. A propeller plane hums into the Eastern sky, its sound mixes with the soft rumble of a high-altitude jet, and dissolves away over the wood. The feeling of peace is mesmerising. Hidden in their treetop nests, countless wood pigeons, wrens, robins and rooks are sleeping. Still as statues the trees stand waiting. Dead branches drop, some fall with a single thump, others clatter down through leaves. Sounds float into the wood blurrily from the world outside. Ducks and geese, hints of far-away night traffic on the A12, and ghostly echoes, cows and sheep grazing the surrounding meadows. Is time really passing or is the wood dreaming? It's sifting yesterday away. Then, a bell strikes 1am. Beautiful. Crystal clear. The parish clock, several miles away and barely audible during the day. There are murmurs of a breeze throughout, and hazes of tiny delicate sounds like flurries of dry rain that come in waves. Perhaps leaves microscopically jostling in the cooling air.

Not a place for unstable microphones. A mile along the winding footpath beside the River Crouch, with Althorne railway station and the ringing masts of Bridgemarsh Marina behind us, the landscape ahead is barren and wonderful. We pass concrete river bank reinforcements like sculpted mounds, treacherous slippery with weed. Further on, we come upon a stony beach and leave the microphones to record on a tripod, at the water's edge. We bid them farewell while we retire for a flask of tea. Drawn by the low tide and a waiting sea, fresh water streams urgently out, shallow over stones, rushing in sparkling eddies, blown this way and that by the equinoctial winds. But at 12 minutes alone and overcome by the pressure of air, the tripod keels over. It clanks onto newly exposed mud and stone, saved, by the outgoing tide. They carry on recording with flowing water perilously close. From this angle, the sound balance has shifted. Less river, more sky. A desolate grey sky, alive only with wind. The water hurries on. A lone redshank rings overhead. Gusts bully and blow. Wet mud glistens and dries. Then at 19 minutes seen from afar, back one of us runs over the stones, to set the tripod straight, to record a little more. The River Crouch is shrinking steadily, as it empties itself into the sea. Another lone bird passes. Then back we come again to collect the microphones and carry on with our walk to Burnham-on-Crouch.

It's just after midday in August and very hot. Families are out on the beach sunbathing, children play in the water. At the shoreline, cool waves wash and dissolve onto the shingle. With each recession of a wave, water fizzes over the stones, sometimes frothing like bubbling champagne overflowing from a glass. The waves roll in on currents that lift and curl. Each wave kneads and brushes the shingle in its own unique way. The detail is intricate, each fragment of stone moves with it's own audible signature. Sitting so close to moving water is like a balm to the ears. To celebrate six months of Radio Lento, here's 19 minutes of watery ear balm from Felixstowe beach!

East Cliff overlooks the Channel and on a clear day like this, has a hazy view of France. On the way down to The Warren Beach, steep down a narrow winding path lined with stubby trees, we found a quiet spot to record, free of road noise. We left the microphones on a little tree overgrown with ivy, leaning out over a precipitous bank, thick with undergrowth and more trees overlooking a campsite below. Listen-in to the sound of the distant sea pervading the air like a soporific pillow. At 7 minutes, the scene is temporarily and dramatically interrupted by a World War II Spitfire. It appears from the land behind, heads briefly out towards France, before turning back. 45 minutes of coastal tranquillity returns. Now settle into the sound of the ocean murmuring with some comfortable wood pigeons, robins and seagulls. Light breezes ruffle leaves, children's voices float up from the campsite, high planes cross the sky. At the foot of the cliff the odd train passes along the Folkestone to Dover railway line.

Basking in 30 degree heat borrowed from July, it's a still September day. This forest, set in the Hertfordshire countryside, is at its calmest. As it is so quiet, it may take a little time for your ears to adjust. It is late on a Monday morning, there's nobody else around to hear the woodland alive with the buzzing of insects and scattered bird calls of rooks, robins and wood pigeons. This forest, first established in 1767, is bisected by a railway line linking Hertford North station with London. Regular passenger services reverberate the cavernous space beneath the trees as they slide through. There's a heavy freighter at 40 minutes pulling smooth wagons that scythe the steel rails, and at 63 minutes another, a single locomotive with squeaky suspension. The noise of the passing trains seems to accentuate the sense of space in this wood and to intensify the silence in between. It's a silence sparsely punctuated by flocks of jackdaws as they forage the surrounding fields, and at 54 minutes a buzzard, a drooping whistling call as it circles high above the tree canopy. This recording highlights just what an unusually peaceful place this is. It is a rare spot in the south of England where there is no road noise. The airspace above has layers of slow rumbling, high altitude jet planes, then lower down their tuneful cousins the propeller planes, banking and wheeling over the landscape. These are in themselves calming sounds. This non-stop spatial audio recording, made from the trunk of a tree just next to the public footpath, runs for 73 minutes. Its length shares the extraordinary qualities of the Clinton-Baker Pinetum as a long-form listening experience. Lastly, because it is so easily missed, hear at 32 minutes far off over the fields the bell striking 12, this is St Mary's Church Bayford, built by William Robert Baker. Listen to other episodes from this special place.

It's 8am and deep in the forest, steady banks of wind are pushing into the upper canopy. Above, the sky is pale blue, bright. It is late May, the day begins. This is the last section of a 12 hour all-night recording. When we set the microphones up the day before, the air was still and warm, rich with the scent of untouched leafy ground. Now in this new day the high branches are swaying, their broad leaves hushing. Drops of water from a night rain shower onto the thick viny undergrowth that carpets the ground. Perched amongst them blackbirds, song thrush, wrens, wood pigeons, great tits and robins sing songs that reverberate around this cathedral of trees. And through the trees, from winding forest paths, dogs bark on their morning walks. Nearby, just beside the microphones, little birds occasionally flutter down to poke about in the undergrowth. Moving and changing, these tall trees stand timeless, gently blown by waves of wind. This episode comes in higher definition sound for a clearer listen.

It's a cloudy late August afternoon on the banks of the Thames Estuary near Benfleet in Essex. Wild gusts of wind race in over the water. On this side, spots of rain float in the air but a mile away on Canvey Island there's sun. It's low tide. Birds swoop and swirl over the exposed mudflats, hunting for food. Redshanks, gulls, little egrets, oyster catchers, curlew, avocet, crows. We climb down onto the mud and leave the microphones beside a tall upright rock for some shelter. It's not unlike a standing stone. The traffic on Canvey Island is a distant rumble, punctuated by the occasional motorbike. From behind, an aircraft takes off from Southend Airport flying directly overhead, tearing the sky, then out over the estuary. The wind drops and a blissful peace returns. Feathery wings swoosh nearby. Trains pass softly on the London Tilbury Southend railway line. Mud bubbles and pops in the quiet, sparkling with the movements of tiny creatures enlivened by the drying air.

It's 1am. In a remote wood set amongst steeply sloping fields above the now infamous Todbrook reservoir in Whaley Bridge Derbyshire. Heavy drops of rain have started to fall. Each fleeting drop punctuates the night air. A pair of owls appear from nowhere, calling to each other. The last flights to Manchester airport make their way over the moor. A restless lamb bleats. Hidden in almost complete darkness the rain reveals to the ear the thick canopy of leaves above. There is no wind. the trees are still. A single pinprick light glows far away over the moor. It's the last streetlight that marks the outer boundary of the town that lies a mile down the valley. Time passes. The rain gradually gets heavier.

It is 3am. At the water's edge, the shadows are thick. A single star reflects in the ink black water, bobbed by passing ripples. The wide-open waterscape is alive with the sound of birds, swimming and calling, drippling the surface of the water for food, cleaning their wings, landing and taking off. Something creeps through the foliage nearby, perhaps a swan in search of a place to settle. The air's still balmy from the hot day before. Soft breezes come and go, rustling the leaves of the over-hanging trees. In woodland across the lake, muntjacs invisibly call to each other, their dog-like barks carrying easily over the water. Miles beyond, undulating waves of traffic flow along the A10, sounding sometimes like distant wind. This recording was made in July. Microphones were hidden in a tree on the edge of the lake and left to record all night. The location was hidden away from the path, tucked down a shallow bank behind dense trees, nettles and brambles. A special spot known only to birds, insects and mammals.

In the middle of a sundrenched field in Gilston Park near Harlow in Essex, a crow calls far-off to the left, a bird scarer fires shots to the right. It's a warm afternoon and there's a brisk August wind blowing across the landscape. Sitting beneath the vast boughs of an ancient Oak, shoulder-high grasses, thistles and sappling hawthorns hiss and flail in the wind. Dead branches reach out like arms, while green leaves on the healthy branches bounce and rustle. A bird comes to perch nearby. A fleeting fly whizzes past the microphones. From time-to-time the wind drops, and the A414 can be heard in the distance. Filtered by distance through acres of grass, the roadlike qualities are gone. It has become a soft wide noise across the horizon, a waterless tidal flow.

Sitting on a warm shingle beach where the river Deben joins the North Sea, feet stretched into the cool water. It's a hot afternoon and the ferry over to Bawdsey has made its last crossing of the day. Waves wash over the fine shingle, shifting and sieving, sweeping to and fro, fizzing and receding. A little way over on the right, a rock pool fills and empties with the swell. Seagulls fly out over the estuary mouth towards the sea. Small motor boats pass. Tilled up by the action of the waves a fragment of stone tinkles like a bright piece of metal. There's a gentle onshore breeze. Towards the end, the soft sound of a high altitude jet becomes a rumble that dissolves into the eastern sky. ** Share this restful soundscape with someone - buy a Radio Lento sound card **

Forty minutes walk from Stanford-le-Hope railway station, along residential avenues and a service road that leads to the nature reserve, past a single story brick built municipal transformer station that hummed in the hot afternoon sun, down a stony footpath where we stopped to pick blackberries and over the freight railway line to the nearby London Gateway deepwater container port via the level crossing, we found this hidden away beach. It is set back from the main channel of the Thames in a small bay. The beach was empty except for one other family. We put the microphones to record in a sheltered spot and retired to brew tea on a camping stove, then relaxed to the lapping waves and the sound of the children playing happily in the sand. This is almost twenty four minutes of pure bliss As the tide goes out and the waves change. The engine of a marine vessel moored some way off emits a low bass note. Occasionally a deep industrial thud can be heard from the container port. Towards the end the mud slightly fizzes as it is exposed to the air. A lone bird calls faintly as it scours the fresh mud for food. A propellor plane hums distantly over in the South West.

Beside the A10 flyover in the Hertfordshire countryside, crickets bask in summer heat and road noise. The flyover has been designed to reduce the noise and impact of the road across the valley. It isn't perfect. Leaks in its noise barriers made the passing traffic sound like objects shooting along a tube. From a certain angle the cars seem to vanish in mid air. Far over on the right, as cars join the bridge on stilts, each makes a loud thump, like a giant see-saw. This is a section from the start of the New River Path between Hertford and Ware. **Re-issued in high-definition sound.**

The Lee Valley reservoir chain comprises thirteen lakes that separate the London Boroughs of Haringey and Enfield to the west from Waltham Forest and Essex in the east. The area is made up of marshes and parkland, rich in wildlife, including woodland and water birds. This recording is of the dawn chorus around 5am when nobody is around. It was captured by a pair of microphones looking out over the lake from a tree that overhangs the water's edge in the Fishers Green Nature Reserve. It starts gently, water birds dabbling around for food, and builds up over 40 minutes to swirling raucous gulls and flapping flocks of geese taking off and landing, against a backdrop of woodland birds from the surrounding area, and the sound of distant traffic on the A10. It's a surcluded spot on the soily bank, almost close enough to dip your feet in, hidden under trees, an ideal position to listen to life on the lake.

Over the hills above the sun is going down. It's been a warm dry April day along the Kerry Ridgeway. High pressure, light breezes. It's late afternoon and cars, tractors, farm vehicles and the odd lorry rattle past. Hidden behind hedgerows down a steep bank a timeless stream flows under trees. It is alive with birds. The ground is ankle deep with dry leaves. Occasionally a roving bee comes along, to look at the microphones. This is a secluded spot in a wide open landscape of steep fields and woodland.

Along a narrow footpath that threaded through wide open farmland we came across a lonely outcrop of young and exposed oak trees. Their dry leaves hushed and rustled and hissed in response to the changing strength of the wind. It blew quite strong at times. We set up the microphones to record. The occasional lilting bird calls are from a buzzard, a broad-winged hawk that was circling the area. About five minutes into the recording a tractor began mowing a neighbouring field. These are the sounds of nature, the wind and of a worked landscape. At the end the buzzard flew right over us as we came to collect the microphones.

Inside the wood the ambience is changing from evening to night. Now it is owned by the crickets, hidden in carpets of leaves. Muntjac deer move about softly. Twigs and dead branches drop surprisingly often into the soft ground with a thud. Aircraft of indeterminate origin over-fly the wood at high altitude. Owls call. The parish church strikes midnight near the end. Deep listening with headphones helps to uncover the qualities within this recording.

Yesterday on an ancient bridleway that runs through open farmland, just before the rain clouds caught us up, we stopped for a picnic on the edge of a wheat field. As the clouds approached we recorded the sounds of the strong breezes playing in the dry wheat and through an outcrop of trees. The wind dropped and we carried on walking along the bridleway as the rain fell, scattered through the leaves of the trees that line the path either side. The sun came out, the air became heavy and humid. Crickets signalled to each other, hidden in the thick grass,

About a kilometre into the forest we left the microphones strapped to the trunk of a huge ancient tree. The spot was well off the beaten path and opened onto a natural clearing with a cathedral like acoustic sound. This recording starts just after 9pm to capture the sound of twilight turning to dark. At 33m there's an owl. More at 40m. Then the strange call of a woodcock.

On a warm breezy walk in the Essex countryside, we left the microphones in a tree at the top of a rarely used bridleway to record the sound of the wind. The tree was one of an outcrop that lines fields of barley and home to a robin. High above the fields are skylarks, not a common sound these days. In the distance there's the odd ice cream van too in the Lea Valley Park. It's a lovely spot to get away from everything and soak up the warm sun grassy freshness and summery sounds. Recorded in June as London's first lockdown started to ease.

On-shore wind cuffing at the ears, breakers hauling at pebble banks, walking over shingle ridges to greet the incoming tide. Soft sands, waves retreating leave fizzing foam to dissolve over seaweed at the strandline. Wading ankle deep in warm lazy seawater rippled into dizzying motion by the breeze. Heavy waves lug at the quayside wall clicking with barnacles. Five scenes: 1. Rye Harbour England. 2. Brighton Beach England. 3. St Just, Cornwall and then 4. a sandy beach on the Adriatic coast Italy. 5. Fowey Harbour England.

The crickets the wind in the trees make the softness of this wood. This is the hour up to 11pm. Starts with 10 minutes of a loud muntjac deer barking very close to the microphones. Owls in the distance follow and creatures creeping about. Two distinct gun shots at 15m 30s. At 30m 24s a pheasant scared calls out very loudly. The peace returns for the remainder. The church clock chimes 11 near the end.

In a remote spot just below the Kerry Ridgeway in Powys Mid-Wales, where a stream runs along the bottom of a wooded gully beside a country road, lies some rural peace and tranquillity, and what must be the murmurs of the Ridgway, voiced in the trees. The Ridgway is an ancient trading route between Wales and England that never drops below 1000 feet. Recorded on a sunny afternoon in April 2019, catch the sheep being fed, occasional cars and farm vehicles passing by on the road above the gully, and the infectious call of the early blackbirds amongst chif chafs, hedge sparrows and wrens.

In a remote spot just below the Kerry Ridgeway in Powys Mid-Wales, where a stream runs along the bottom of a wooded gully beside a country road, lies some rural peace and tranquillity, and what must be the murmurs of the Ridgway, voiced in the trees. The Ridgway is an ancient trading route between Wales and England that never drops below 1000 feet. Recorded on a sunny afternoon last April catch the sheep being fed, occasional cars and farm vehicles passing by on the road above the gully, and the infectious call of the early blackbirds amongst chiffchaffs, hedge sparrows and wrens and bees.

Experience the mesmerising sound of the world passing by, recorded from outside and inside a couchette on a SNCF sleeper train one August night. Departure is from Paris Austerlitz just before 11pm. The train journeys through the night and takes 12 hours to get all the way across France to reach Port Bou in Spain. Hear the announcements and the train pausing in the early hours of the morning at Toulouse.

June 2016. A summer thunderstorm is passing over North East London. The atmosphere is electric. It's the final hour of polling in the referendum to decide whether the UK remains or leaves the European Union. Sheltering under a large umbrella in the back garden of our little terrace house, listening for the next roll of thunder. Long expectant gaps. Sharp pin prick drops landing in hundreds as brightly spatial clicks on the taught fabric. Then, slow crumpling rumbles that open up the vastness of the sky Listener notes: this audio is recorded using high quality binaural microphones. They fit into each ear and capture very accurately the way we spatially hear sound. The only way to properly listen back to a binaural recording is using a pair of headphones. Set the playback volume low and gradually raise the volume until the level feels about what feels realistic in your experience of being out amongst the rain.

An hour of pure immersive peace and quiet from that spot in the wood where nobody goes. This surround audio recording is unedited and just as it happened. Underneath the trees hear crickets, aircraft gently passing far above and the parish church chimes 10pm towards the end. Muntjac deer trot about and one begins to loudly call across the wood at the end.

This time of year the sparsely wooded hills just above the now infamous Todbrook Reservoir in Whaley Bridge Derbyshire resound with the dawn chorus. Thrushes, wrens, robins amongst many other types of birds and a woodpecker and from a nearby farm the cockerel announces the arrival of a new day. Steep grass moorland, grazing sheep within gritstone walls slope down the valley towards the reservoir.

With some very loud thunderclaps this spring storm passes over the back garden. Sheltering in an old shed beside a high wall. The rain eases off and the birds keep singing happily. Towards the end an explosive thunderclap sets off a car alarm. Recorded a few years ago in binaural audio the garden is situated in Handsworth Wood Birmingham and sounds most realistic on headphones or earbuds.

It is just after half past eight in the evening in the Suffolk wood. The sun is setting. It is dusk, very warm and dry with light breezes. There are no people about. The A12, about four miles away provides a reliable hum. Aeroplanes lazily arc overhead. Crickets chirp, leaves move in the breeze, what may be muntjac deer creeps about. Listen out for the distant bell of St Marys Church, it can be heard striking nine.

Walking along a cliff path lined with crickets the sea appears, steep down to the right. There's no one around. There's time to listen. There's a dot on the horizon, a boat. Hardly moving. At 6m30s we move to a different location - down a flinty path and over deep sand to the water's edge. The water fizzes. Is the tide coming in, or out? At 13m45s, back up on the cliff path, warm grassy wafts and around the headland to another bay. At 19m06s, looking down from above the sea sounds different in this bay. A pontoon out in the swell occasionally rocks against its mooring. Finally at 24m55s, at the shoreline to sit and be close to the waves. The tide's feeling lazy. It is going out.

Hearing London at night from a small patch of grass bordered by shrubs, flowering plants and a bay tree, a typical garden in Hackney enclosed within old brick-built walls. Just before 3am distant machines began to fill the air with gentle undulating washes of sound. The effect is pleasantly soporific. It's a wide landscape recording and quite delicate, best through headphones or on speakers when everything is quiet.

At the bottom of a steep-sided thickly wooded and uninhabited valley in the rural county of Derbyshire, England, this babbling brook fills the night air with its watery melodies. In this recording made in early summer, the occasional pair of owls can be heard, and what might be creatures flitting in the shallow water. It's an unedited recording of a real place, part of a 14 hour non-stop take to capture the essence of the valley, and so includes some human activity too, nothing much, the odd car passing on a distant road and a few aircraft of different types over-flying the hills.

Best with headphones or earbuds if you have some handy. At times steep and very rocky, this is a surround-sound audio recording of a walk through trees and scrub that's alive with cicadas. It is August, early evening and the temperature has subsided to a luxurious 30 degrees. The path never ended. It led us into the wilderness. Lots of space to listen, relax and unwind.

It is mid-August. The early sun is lighting up the treetops against a pale blue sky. You're hiding out in this rural wood which is typical of any in the South East of England. You're listening to it waking up with the sounds of jovial wood pigeons, rasping rooks, sparkling wrens and robins. Rabbits hop about between the trees, over carpets of dry leaves. As if from nowhere a woodman starts work, clearing fallen branches. Miles away, the A12 flows with traffic, softened by the distance into an oceanic haze. Pheasants prowl under the lazy arc of a passing jet aircraft. Escape to this secret place and watch through your ears as the new day unfurls.