Radio Lento podcast4 Maalis 2023

157 Immersed in Bayford Woods (an ear-witness account)

Sometimes we feel it's right to share an ear-witness account from a place where natural quiet and human-made noise co-exist. Our last was from the Forest of Dean (episode 135 which documented the aural reality common to so many 'natural' places today. Human-made noise has quite varied effects and meanings, not always bad. This latest ear-witness account contains sounds familiar to urban dwellers, but that are also found here in a countryside setting in January.

This episode contains intense periods of forest peacefulness as well as huge flocks of jackdaws and a woodpecker. One quite distant gunshot is heard plus a heavy passing freight train, more planes than we're perhaps used to, and a tractor that caused the hundreds of jackdaws to take flight. The gunshot happens just before 11 minutes. We did (for listen-ability reasons) cut out over a hundred similar often much louder shots but kept this single one in for the ear-witness report of pheasant shooting season.

Surrounded by open farmland in the Hertfordshire countryside, Bayford Pinetum has become a fascinating place to us. Fascinating because each time we visit it seems to have fundamentally changed in some material way, but still somehow maintains its same, curiously mysterious, sound-feel.

It's a very picturesque environment. Easy to take photos and feel visually immersed in nature surrounded by ancient trees and a rich carpet of lichen, moss and fungus. It's also not that difficult to imagine why people believe witches and fairies inhabit places like this.

To the ear, and during periods of quiet, when no trains or planes are passing, there's a delicate white noise sheen in one part of the forest. It hangs like a fabric, very spatially in the airspace immediately above, as you move along the path. It has a strong enlivening and relaxing effect and is audible on headphones in this sound landscape recording. We think it's the sound of a small babbling stream, about fifty yards from the microphones and down a gully, being reflected off the extensive lattices of winter bare branches and boughs high overhead.

Listen to other episodes from this special place.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(300)

299 Owls of Big Wood (sleep safe with owls)

Night woodland. Sonorous owls. Soft nocturnal breezes catching high in the broad-leafed trees. A panoramic woodland in spatial sound, collected by the Lento box alone. Always so fascinating to us is h...

14 Heinä 50min

298 Thunderstorm over sonorous rural woodland (warning - sudden shock thunderclaps)

Last month on the evening of 26 May a huge lightning storm centred over a remote wooded area on the Leicestershire-Rutland border where we had left the Lento box alone to record. From where we were st...

20 Kesä 1h 32min

297 Sonorous rural woodland before an approaching storm

Last week we took the Lento box to capture the natural soundscapes of rural Leicestershire and Rutland. Our visit coincided with the warmest May temperatures on record and as it turned out the most po...

2 Kesä 1h 1min

296 Looking out on Portland Harbour part 2

Here beneath the tree again, at the water's edge. Looking out on Portland Harbour. Left of scene the sunlit parapets of Nothe Fort. Ahead the flat sun-drenched sea, with lazy waves rolling in over hal...

11 Touko 44min

295 Low tide on the causeway - part II (sleep safe with occasional herring gulls and oyster catchers)

A soundscene, of an island. Asleep. Between the tides. About this time last year we visited Burgh Island in Devon on the south west coast of England. We made two long-form overnight recordings while w...

16 Huhti 1h 1min

294 Dawn in Shelve Wood Shropshire with cuckoo

The moment we entered Shelve Wood we knew it was a perfect place to record. Shropshire is sparsely populated. There's only one B road in the Shelve Wood area. The country lanes carry little traffic, a...

21 Maalis 1h 1min

293 Pools of Rye Harbour (sleep safe)

The Lento box records alone, tied to a tree, behind thickets of gorse. The night hours pass. The microphones capture the panoramic peace of this wild coastal landscape. Rye Harbour Nature Reserve on t...

2 Maalis 1h

292 Moorland trees in December gales - Derbyshire (sleep safe after owls at start)

Exposed moorland trees create a strong natural source of undulating white noise when shouldering the brunt of a winter gale. The sounds they produce are uniquely enchanting and an absolute delight to...

12 Helmi 1h