Slow Radio

Writer and poet Susan Richardson invites us to a seal pupping beach on the Pembrokeshire coast; a world that has inspired tales of shape-shifting selkie folk and mermaids. We stand above a cove. The air is filled with the haunting cries of the grey seals below us, and a soap opera of their lives unfolds. Through the human-sounding calls of the pups, the grunts and splashes of the bull seals as the...

A montage of music and natural sounds including whale song and Tundra swans.

A montage of music and natural sounds including an Antarctic fur seal and her pup, Yellow-billed storks, and a Himalayan snowcock.

Britain has lost 90% of its traditional orchards. So, seven years ago the villagers of Haselbury Plucknett planted a Somerset orchard: 35 cider apple trees, all old varieties with names as gorgeous as their colours - Kingston Black, Sweet Crimson King, Slack-me-Girdle. "Make sure a rainbow goes into your cider barrel," says Matthew Bryant, filling his bucket with windfalls. In the tin shed at the...

A montage of music and natural sounds from the Abernethy Forest in the Scottish Highlands, coniferous woodland that is home to chaffinches, wren, willow warblers, mistle thrush, Scottish crossbills and more; we meet an Oscillated Turkey, native to the rainforests of Guatemala; we’ll warm your cockles with the sound of thermal mud pools at Poikili Hot Springs in Papua New Guinea; and from mud pools...

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the chirping of nesting seabirds on a remote island to night-time in the marshes of Trinidad, sounds from the banks of a mighty Kenyan river and the waking dawn in the heart of Southern India.

A journey in sound across the lands intimately associated with Al-Andalus, medieval Moorish Spain and Portugal. Starting in Granada at the glorious Alhambra Palace, we hear the running water of the fountains that adorn the palace as well as the sound of modern day Andalusia, with flamenco singer Juan Pinilla. We then move to Alfama and Mouraria in the old Arab quarter of Lisbon, where we hear the...

In 1968 Redzi Bernard's mother arrived in Lalibela - Ethiopia's holy city - on a mule after an arduous trek through the mountains. Earlier this year Redzi recreated her mother's journey and when she arrived in Lalibela she discovered a timeless world. Just before dawn on a Sunday, she enters an church complex - all below ground level - where hundreds of pilgrims gather in white robes, incense burn...

Think of the American South and one man-made sound plays out evocatively across the landscape: the horn of a passing freight train. For a century and a half it's been almost synonymous with the idea of America, particularly where the rural blends with the urban. In the city of Nashville, Tennessee - 'music city' - the last century has been accompanied by another signature sound: the honky tonk bar...

A montage of music and natural sounds from farmland in Somerset where willow warblers, robins and swallows merge with the faint chirp of crickets; a group of white rhinos going about their daily business in KwaZulu Natal; a troupe of busy white-throated Capuchin monkeys in a Costa Rican rainforest; and the ethereal call of the bellbird echoing through a forest in New Zealand.

Renowned field recordist Chris Watson follows the sound of signal bells, and finds himself in a Gate Box on a stretch of the East Yorkshire railway, listening for trains and birds with signalman Dave Beckett.

A montage of music and natural sounds from a sunrise recorded in Cluny House Gardens in Perthshire; the call of a lyrebird captured in the eucalyptus trees of Hastings State Forest in southern Tasmania; a woodland in Minsmere, Suffolk where tawny owls, nightingales and cuckoos greet the early morning; and the mysterious hooting of a troupe of white-handed gibbons in Khao Yai National Park, Thailan...

In the fifth of five "slow-radio" walks in which writer Horatio Clare searches for Bach's footsteps - and his ghost - the route takes him from the village of Roseburg along the Old Salt Road to Mölln, and on to the city of Lübeck.

Artist and cultural geographer Rob St John joins presenter Will Abberley on a walk through the Pennines, untangling the idea of the dark and unsettling impression of eeriness in the English landscape.

Dusk to dawn at the Isle of Wight Zoo. On the beautiful Sandown Beach on the Isle of Wight stands a historic fort, now home to the Isle of Wight Zoo. It is run by the Wildheart Trust, which promotes the survival of endangered species, and is well-known as a centre for rescued big cats who, along with pocket-sized primates and other even smaller animals have a starring role in this portrayal of the...

A montage of music and natural sounds from the world’s northernmost freshwater lake in Siberia where you’ll hear the calls of Lapland buntings, oriental golden plovers and ptarmigans. We also visit Ein Bokek Canyon in Israel, where the chirps of graceful warblers compete with the rasping sounds of Tristram’s grackles. Then we head to Dyfed in Wales, where an early morning chorus of chaffinches and...

Episode 4/5. In 1705, the 20-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach set off from his home in Arnstadt to walk 250 miles to Lübeck, there to meet his hero, the composer and organist Dietrich Buxtehude. In the fourth of five "slow-radio" walks in which writer Horatio Clare searches for Bach's footsteps - and his ghost - Horatio Clare searches for his footsteps - and his ghost - the route takes him along the...

Nightingales singing, with musicians responding to them, in the Sussex woods. They are joined under the trees by Clive Bell playing bamboo flute, and by folk singer Sam Lee. .

Composer Iain Chambers takes a sound recording field trip around Orford Ness in Suffolk. This site – an isolated shingle spit on the Suffolk coast – once played a key role in the UK's development of radar and ballistics. Since buying Orford Ness from the Ministry of Defence in 1993, the National Trust's policy has been one of 'managed decline' – these buildings are now overrun by nature. The excit...

A montage of music and natural sounds from a canal in The Camargue where nightingales and swifts greet the morning and from an oasis in Oman where cinnamon-breasted rock buntings are singing happily near a gentle waterfall. We also take a journey along the South Tyne in Northumbria, and as the water bubbles away you can hear the calls of crossbills, meadow pipits and a goshawk. Finally, there’s a...

Immerse yourself in this river setting with Petroc Trelawny - with sounds of the Severn recorded along, and within, the flowing water.

Nathaniel Mann joins lonely seafarers on a container ship for some modern sea shanties.

Slow Radio for Radio 3's Along the River week. Musician Tim Shaw and producer Julian May collaborate with a Northumbrian burn to create a piece - The Water's Music 'He made his habitation beside the water's music'. This line, from a poem by Martyn Crucefix, lodged in the mind of radio producer Julian May, inspiring an ambition - to collaborate with a brook to create a composition. By moving rocks...

The magical North Pennines landscape of deaf shepherd-poet Josephine Dickinson, which is the backdrop to her real and imagined sound world.

A montage of music and natural sounds from a dawn chorus on a lakeshore in southeast Sweden, the liquid call of the Australian magpie from a mangrove swamp in Queensland, hippos grunting and splashing in Malawi’s Shire River, and skylarks singing overhead while curlews intone their desolate cries around Deadwater Fell in Northumberland.