Radio Lento podcast

Locked-down and nowhere to go. With pounded pavements all pounded, and back gardens beleaguered under pallid skies so dull sodden with wet, it's hard to remember the feeling of travelling out of London to walk free through a forest in barmy summer heat. It feels important to think of it now though. More than ever. Really think of it. Reawaken it. The experience of a late summer walk through the Ba...

Every year, on or near the 4th of April, we leave the microphones out in the back garden to record the dawn chorus. It's a simple ritual, partly to mark the beginning of a new season, and partly to compare how the dawn chorus sounds now compared to last year. Despite us living in Hackney in the North East of London, where the buildings and roads don't change much, the soundscape from year to year...

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,...

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 ne...

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 ye...

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. Rilli...

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 trunk...

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 o...

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 ba...

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 o...

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 wit...

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 i...

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 c...

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 water...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 o...

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 shing...

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 bel...

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,...

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 broa...

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 on...

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 da...