300 Suffolk maize field in coastal breezes

As the land bakes under the hot August sun, the heat rises and so draws cooler air in from over the sea. The resulting breeze is always fresh, and can flow quite strongly even when it isn't windy anywhere else. And so this is how we found coolness yesterday and relief from the relentless sun, shaded under a patch of woodland that grows by the cliffs and the raging sea below.

Along the Suffolk coast a little way on from Felixstowe Ferry is Bawdsey. It's a largely uninhabited rural stretch of coast marked by a huge and now obsolete RADAR station that when we passed by yesterday was sadly not open to visitors. We were walking with purpose, hugging the rough edge of the country road heading roughly north and hoping to get to a Martello tower that we’d not visited before. The sun poured down its heat as we walked. So much of the open ground was yellow. The air smelled of bone dry shrubbery and sometimes of eucalyptus. The road stretched on before we eventually found a post directing us back to the coastal path towards the cliffs and the sea.

Through a field growing onions and then along a path with a wire fence on one side protecting a field with a squat looking structure in the middle. The map said it was a ventilation shaft for a subterranean military bunker that like the RADAR station is now also obsolete. Just before the path reached the edge of the cliffs it wound through a patch of woodland. Our footsteps crunching over pine needles and cones, we stood still to listen to the unique sounds that trees make as wind passes through their leaves and branches.

Onwards then along the winding path under the trees and out to a wide view of fields and the sea, the Martello tower in the distance. The soundscape here made us stop. Tall plants growing sweetcorn. Countless thousands of long slender leaves waving and rustling. Leaves so long they moved like streamers, tossed this way and that. Tangling and untangling in the breeze. This was the place. We found a tree at the edge of the woodland that looked onto the maize field, and left the Lento box to record. While it recorded we walked back into the woodland and rested for an hour under the kind cool trees.

* We are so happy to be sharing this special sound landscape recording as the 300th episode, made only yesterday on the Suffolk coast. We travelled entirely by foot (apart from the ferry across the River Deben), nodding to previous recording locations made early in our Lento adventures for episodes 25, 33 and 70 along the way. We were glad to be back in Suffolk for this milestone episode.

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