Radio Lento podcast

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.  

** Thank you for listening. Thank you to everyone who supports Radio Lento with donations, reviews and promotions. All your support helps us to continue to collect high definition spatial recordings from real natural places.

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 how the natural world sounds at night, when there's absolutely nobody about. It's quite difficult to record though in its true resting state because human made noise is audible even from distances of ten miles or more. But here on a calm May night in Big Wood on the Leicestershire-Rutland border the Lento box found it. A forest at rest. Owls calling across wide reverberant spaces. Undulating wind moving high in the trees. And so many aural shadows. Velvet brown, shapeless, and yet there.

Listening to this collected soundscape in spatial audio makes us think, how owls don't sound like they look. Their aural presence is not stark or silvery at all. Their calls are sonorous and have a timbre more like short wooden flutes, blown and tongued with such precision. They sound more golden than silver. The kind of golden green light you sometimes see when a shaft of moonlight filters down through broad leafed trees.

* The Lento box collected this soundscape in May tied to a tree in Big Wood on the Leicestershire-  Rutland border. This location is remote (as far as we can get in the UK) and the sound landscape is predominantly natural, though some distant echoes of human made noise are sometimes heard filtering through the forest. We're sharing this segment as *sleep safe* but some people may not feel it is because of the owl calls. This segment begins about an hour after sunset. Sheep and lambs are audible, and some periods of distant squeaking probably from small mammals living in a nearby tree or in a nest at the foot of the tree.

** The image for this episode is taken from the information board at the entrance to the wood. The wood is managed by the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. The board describes special plants and insects found there, with lovely illustrations.

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 staying about three quarters of a mile away we could see fork lightning. We were worried that our equipment might not survive.

In our last episode (297) we shared the hour before the tumult began. Now in episode 298, we’re sharing a 92 minute segment of what it sounded like to be within the uninhabited forest as the storm passed directly overhead*.

When we were in the woodland looking for a good spot for the mics, the sky was pure blue and the sun was shining down brightly. Soft breezes flowed between the trees carrying scents of cow parsley and sweet smelling vegetation. A perfect early summer's day. As we tied the Lento box to the trunk of an ash tree we had no hint of the weather to come. Torrential rain. Constant rolling thunder. Many overhead lightning strikes. A deluged forest streaming with water but whose resident wildlife rapidly springs back into song.

If you like the thrill of sudden shock thunderclaps this is probably the episode for you but as a general note to all listeners please be aware there are some extremely loud and sudden thunderclaps as well as various other sound quality glitches. This is definitely NOT sleep safe. Please treat this episode as being a sound witness to extreme weather conditions in a remote rural woodland. It's also an opportunity to hear how wildlife sounds change during and after storm conditions.

* This episode contains some shock thunderclaps (most intense at 50m 22s). The soundscape integrity is temporarily degraded when the mics overload. There is also a physical problem with the box itself, a 30 minute long period where the torrential rain gathers high up in the tree and begins to stream down the trunk some of which drips on top of the box itself. The dripping does eventually ease off and the forest returns with all its deluged wateriness back to rich sonorous song.

** For obvious reasons we don't have a photo of the storm in the forest. The image is from the same storm as it headed towards the area where the box was recording.

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 powerful thunderstorms we'd ever experienced.

On the evening of 26 May huge storm clouds swept into the valley, centering exactly over a remote wooded area where we'd left the Lento box tied to a tree to capture the natural soundscape. An hour later the storm was still directly overhead with ear-splitting thunderclaps and fork lightning. We crossed our fingers that the mics would be alright. We collected the box the next morning. The mics survived but the box was drenched.

In this episode we're sharing the hour leading up to those lightning strikes. Listening is a rare opportunity to experience the sound-feel of being within an empty rural woodland as the trees and wildlife prepare to ride out the on-coming tumult.

Gain full aural immersion of this woodland soundscape with headphones or ear pods. The clarity and spatial reverberances of the spring birdsong. The 360 degree humming created by millions of tiny bees and other insects engaged in their daily foraging. Hear how a small deer picks its way over the leaf litter and pauses right beneath the tree holding the mics. Was it curious about the Lento box? Its footfalls seem to suggest it was. Pheasants can also be heard wandering the forest floor nearby, and mewing to each other in ways we haven't heard before. Baa’ings of sheep and lambs from the surrounding fields echo in the spaces between the trees. As this passage of time progresses towards the 50 minute mark the sky above the woodland has gone from a bright spring blue to the densest of heavy clouded grey. The landscape has dimmed into a premature dusk, punctuated only by intense electrical flashes. It can feel so dangerous to us even from within sturdy buildings, and yet thunderstorms and the way the wildlife respond to them with only leaves and branches for protection are all just part and parcel of life on Earth.

* In the last few minutes of this 62 minute passage of time some owls can be heard hooting shortly after the first major roll of thunder cracks open the rapidly darkening sky. 

** This is Launde Park Wood Nature Reserve, an ancient woodland of 57 Hectares, managed by Leicester and Rutland Wildlife Trust.  

*** Episode 298 shares the next hour. Be prepared, it's one of the most tumultuous hours we've ever recorded!

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 half exposed rocks. Right of scene are some small boats, tugging against their moorings. Rising and falling on light swell.

The sparrows seem to like it here. The lazy waves. The peace gathered in around the tree. The distant hum of boats. Traversing the horizon. Lit sharp in the morning sun.

A pair of wood pigeons fly in. Join the sparrows. Perch high on a top branch. Spread their wings in the soft sea breeze, as if to fly. But no. They’re just stretching their wings, to catch the warmth of the sun.

* This passage of time is a follow-on from episode 251. It's part of a twelve hour overnight recording we made in 2023 on a visit to Weymouth. This spot on the rocks underneath the lone tree by the water immediately to the right of the fort, facing out to the sea, is one of the most sheltered and naturally peaceful places we found along this part of the coast. The waves move in a very particular way as they roll in over the rocks. And due to the woodland behind the fort there's rich birdsong too.

** Read the story of how we found this location and explore all eight of the episodes made here.