Slow Radio

Episode 3/5. 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 third of five "slow-radio" walks in which writer Horatio Clare searches for Bach's footsteps - and his ghost - the route takes us through the beeches of the Oderwald and on into the town of Wolfenbutt...

Welcome to another Slow Radio podcast. In this episode, there are the mesmerising sounds of storm Erik tearing through the rigging and halyards on the boats in Blyth harbour, Northumberland. We glide to Ouse Washes in the Fenland country where Bewick's swans, coots, lapwings, reed buntings and skylarks fill the air with song. And in the evening heavy seas of Gossabrough on Yell Island, Northern Sh...

Radio 3 transports listeners to Trinidad, just off the coast of Venezuela, immersing them in the sounds of the Caribbean island, with writer and actor Elisha Efua Bartels as a guide. Through the sounds of three Port-of Spain gardens - her home by the river in Diego Martin, a garden in the lush valleys of St Ann’s, to a house up in the hills, Elisha reflects on the rich tropical sounds of the islan...

A montage of music and natural sounds from ravens on the Norwegian tundra around Tromso; upwelling of cold water currents at night in the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean off the Galapagos islands; a MacGregor’s bowerbird in a New Guinean rainforest displaying its vocal talents to attract a mate, and the splashes of ice laden water moving and lapping on the shore of a river on Hokkaido Island, per...

Travel writer Horatio Clare walks in the Black Forest in Germany, thinking about the Romantic tradition of the Wanderer, and observing the sights and sounds of the forest

The slow build of a midsummer dawn chorus in Snowdonia, North Wales, interwoven with the sounds of the brooks, streams, and rivers that creep through the hillsides down to the lake by the village: this programme is a tribute to the landscape and past poets of the heart of Snowdonia. An isolated farmhouse near Trawsfynydd was the birthplace of the iconic Welsh shepherd-poet Hedd Wyn. But there were...

A montage of music and natural sounds from a nightingale singing in a reforested WWI battlefield in Belgium, a sunrise over Wolverton Creek in north Norfolk with curlew and pink-footed geese, the Ngorongoro mountain crater in Tanzania with tropical boubou and weaver birds, and a national park Karnataka, India where you'll hear croaking frogs and wild gaur bellowing to one another.

A montage of sounds from the forests around Squam Lake, New Hampshire during the Fall, including the songs of the Carolina wren, red-breasted nuthatch and rufous-sided towhie; a Northern flicker tapping insistently on a tree trunk; red squirrels and chipmunks foraging for food, a pair of loons calling distantly from the misty lake and a barred owl hooting as it begins its nocturnal hunt.

Irish cows make their way up to the winter grazing grounds high above Galway Bay

Episode 2/5. 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 second of five "slow-radio" walks in which writer Horatio Clare searches for his footsteps - and his ghost - the putative route takes him into the Harz Mountains and up to its highest point, the Brock...

Horatio Clare retraces the 20-year-old JS Bach's 250-mile journey to visit his hero Buxtehude in Lubeck. Episode 1 of 5. This is a repeat of an episode originally published in December 2017.

Have yourself a serene little Radio 3 Christmas with the sounds of reindeer, festive music and a secret, enchanted wood. This special edition of the Slow Radio Podcast comprises two very different audio recordings. The first is of reindeer, and more of them than you’d need to pull even a very high profile sleigh. No, this recording, contributed by BBC Four, is of 2,500 of the creatures as they slo...

Benedictine monks speak about their experiences of divine love against a background of chant and sounds that evoke the peace and serenity of the monastery. This episode of Slow Radio was originally podcasted in October 2017. We're grateful to the monks of Pluscarden Abbey for access to their collections of plainsong.

Benedictine monks speak about how they find focus, against a background of chant and sounds that evoke the peace and serenity of the monastery. This episode of Slow Radio was originally podcasted in October 2017. We're grateful to the monks of Pluscarden Abbey for access to their collections of plainsong.

Benedictine monks meditate on the subject of work - from cooking to weaving and beekeeping - against a background of chant and sounds that evoke the peace and serenity of the monastery. This episode of Slow Radio was originally podcasted in October 2017. We're grateful to the monks of Pluscarden Abbey for access to their collections of plainsong.

Monks from Downside, Belmont and Pluscarden Abbeys meditate on the subject of prayer, against a background of chant and sounds that evoke the peace and serenity of the monastery. This episode of Slow Radio was originally podcasted in October 2017. We're grateful to the monks of Pluscarden Abbey for access to their collections of plainsong.

Monks from Downside, Belmont and Pluscarden Abbeys meditate on the nature of silence, against a background of chant and sounds that evoke the peace and serenity of the monastery. This episode of Slow Radio was originally podcasted in October 2017. We're grateful to the monks of Pluscarden Abbey for access to their collections of plainsong.

Kalahari means ‘large thirst’ in the local language and between November and February summer temperatures can reach well over 40 degrees centigrade. To avoid the dry desiccating heat much of the wildlife has adopted nocturnal habits. Wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson captures the changing soundscape from dusk to dawn, when you can see very little but hear everything; from the close up sounds o...

Spoken in the remote forest region of Älvdalen - a place thick with forest and steep valleys - Elfdalian used to be the main language of the area, but Swedish has increasingly become dominant and few young people speak it today. In this slow radio edit, we hear a collage of forest sounds and local voices, travelling through Älvdalen, exploring some of the mysteries of the language and its links to...

Step into Sherwood Forest at night with tawny owls calling to each other in the trees. As daylight comes, a flock of long tailed tits forages through the branches.

Nestle for a while with coots, moorhens and bearded tits from a reed-bed in Humberside, clapper larks rising up from the grasslands of the Kalahari, autumnal sounds of squirrels and nuthatches from the woodlands in Virginia and a spooky Hallowe’en soundscape from a churchyard in Bedfordshire. And there are short excerpts of music by Elgar, John Barry, Amy Beach, Steeleye Span, Edward MacDowell and...

The sounds of battlefields across the world today – from the Somme to the USA, and Afghanistan to Vietnam. Presented by the BBC’s former special correspondent, Allan Little.

A meditation on the meaning of time, whilst wandering through the largest collection of clocks in the country.

Calming birdsong and the crunch of leaves from the New Forest in spring.

Escape from the frenzy of today's world with the dawn chorus from an orchard in the Cotswolds, warblers and skylarks in a Japanese paddy field, and the sounds that accompany the sunset over Florida's Everglades.