Radio Lento podcast

248 Late morning air on Kilve beach

Kilve beach is edged by sheer cliffs and is made of rocks. Mostly small ones the size of oranges, up to medium sized ones the size of sofa cushions. To cross over them is unstable and you have to move like a penguin, which must be fun to watch if you aren't the one trying to stay upright. Jutting up between the smaller rocks are huge mattress sized boulders that are either massive flat topped rocks of unimaginable weight, or maybe if you could look below have no underside at all because they are the exposed surface of the Earth's crust. They make excellent resting points where you can temporarily stop from awkward walking and admire the amazing view.

Having progressed some way along the beach we reached a smooth ridge of rock that ran for a long stretch perpendicular to the sea. It afforded us a path to walk on for a while. Either side of the ridge pools of stranded seawater had gathered beside piles of tangled seaweed. The atmosphere at this point had softened considerably, and there was in addition to being able to hear the sea a kind of silence too, immediately around us, so pure you could hear tiny bubbles popping in the rock pools. 

It had something to do  with the rock cliffs of Kilve. They were doing something interesting. Cupping and reflecting sound, acting like the back wall of a theatre. Ahead the shoreline, though only about fifty yards away, was below the sound horizon owing to a very steep rake on the beach. This has the effect of mellowing the breaking waves, emphasising the weight of the waves rather than the brightness of the turbulent water. Occasionally a seventh wave breaks over a rocky outcrop directly centre of scene sending a plume of foaming suds high into the air and for a few moments above the sound horizon. 

* Far left of scene you can sometimes hear children playing on the beach with their dad, maybe looking for fossils. Some hardy birds that make a peeping call swoop around too. As the episode opens a tiny microlight aeroplane crosses the sky from left to right, going almost directly overhead. For some reason we love this sound, it seems to reflect that free feeling you get on a wide open beach. You may notice the tide is very gradually coming in over the episode, yielding more splashes and watery details from the breaking waves as time progresses. 

247 Natural white noise from the firs of Kielder Forest

This is segment II from a 6-hour sound capture we took earlier this year at Kielder Forest in Northumberland. Recorded in spring, the environment is rich with birdsong, mainly willow warblers whose song is a short and very cheerful descending scale. We'd been walking along one of the rough paths that thread through the forest below the Kielder Observatory and had found exactly what we'd travelled up to this specific area to record. The hushing sound of wind in tall fir trees. 

Of course these are no ordinary trees. They are Grandis Firs. Vertically vast. Each the size of a 15 storey tower block, with huge drooping boughs draped in billions of tiny pine needles. Every needle catches in the wind and converts the energy into audible sound. Individually it's hard to imagine one could hear anything produced from one needle at all, but heard altogether, the sound is powerful. Deeply moving. Akin even to a spiritual experience. After finding a suitable tree to rest the Lento box against, we left it behind in the forest to record the scene alone, hoping the wind would not die down. 

The wind continued to blow in slow undulating waves. And the willow warblers continued to sing their lovely droopy songs, no doubt perched on the droopy boughs of the giant firs. But the trees and the birds were not the only aural presences in this part of the forest. There's a rushing stream, flowing from left to right of scene. It issues its own fresh bright sound to the interior space of the forest, as it rushes down into the valley to join the city-sized reservoir below. 

* At 18 minutes into this segment a plane flies over, but don't worry, it's relatively soft and gentle, flying high up above the clouds. It may initially be hard to tell whether the white noise is from the stream or wind in the firs in this recording. Over time, and as your ears adjust to the aural environment, the distinct qualities of the stream and the wind in the firs may resolve out. Both are highly spatial and texturally different. They often blend into one another, then part, like vails woven from different fabrics, billowing together in currents of air.

** Follow us on Bluesky or Ko-fi to keep up with Lento news. We recently celebrated a big Lento milestone!

246 Edgeland time by the Hythe Sound Mirror (sleep safe)

Turn right off the towpath beside the Military Canal, cross the footbridge, locate the stile that leads onto the hill, then follow the rough footpath up into some impressive edgeland. It's rough. Grassy. Very thistly. And as you ascend it feels hard. Increasingly wild. It's somewhere up here, we say, striding firm against the gradient. But the thing's not marked on the map.  

The Sound Mirror of Hythe is a large concrete parabolic dish. A giant ear, pointed out to sea, designed a hundred years ago, pre-RADAR for the early detection of incoming aircraft. Surely, we puff, a structure like this must stand out like a sore thumb? Well no. The steep ground has twists and folds. Ridges and bends that have to be walked. And no military installation worth its salt, however obsolete, is or should ever be easy to find. 

We eventually see huddled low in the grass a squat blockhouse. A derelict radio receiving station, according to one historical website. Then we see the dish itself. A concrete shape, nestled against a steep bank, sadly now in a terrible state, trees growing up through its collapsing sections. Up close the dish is behind substantial chainwire fencing and surrounded by what amounts to a moat of evil shoulder high stinging nettles. Whatever evidence there may be of the 'listening chamber' said to reside at the foot of the structure, is not possible to see. It may indeed be buried under broken concrete. 

We stood for a long time. Taking it all in. Despite its state, this dish is still active. Still reflecting and to some extent shaping the aural soundscape around it. Of course only from the listening chamber could one be an ear witness to what this structure was properly designed to do, but knowing that on some level it is still working, still channeling the soundscape from the sky above the sea, is, in a quiet way, thrilling.

We found some shelter for the Lento box behind the radio receiving station, angling its view up the hill to capture both the near and far soundscapes. Near, wild wind whips through the edgeland grasses, a few crickets are cricketing. Mid-distance left, the sound mirror, about 40 yards. You can hear the wind when it catches in the trees growing in and around the dish and sometimes a yellowhammer. Right of scene is the hill rolling down into the valley. At the bottom the military canal. What filters in from behind the Lento box is from the coast and the ocean view. Toot toot of the steam railway that runs from Hythe, Dymchurch, Romney and Dungeness. Occasional distant echoes from circling seagulls and a construction site. Listening back we think some of these sounds at least are being reflected off the dish itself. 

245 Night rain on the edge of the Quantock hills (sleep safe)

It was late. Everybody had gone to bed. The remote cottage where we were staying in the Quantock Hills still felt warm, even though the oil burner had knocked itself off a while ago. Despite this, the place had started to feel, well, a bit strange and I wasn't quite sure what the feeling was. 

I put the kettle on and the strange feeling went away. I made the tea, set the kettle back on its stand, stirred the pot, replaced the lid, forgot about the feeling. But then it was back. Intriguing. 

I stepped up out of the kitchen into the back porch where the burner room emitted a faint electrical hum and a rich smell of heating oil. Was it coming from in here? No. The snug lounge then. No. It was coming from behind where I'd just been, the back porch. I stood, stock still. Listening. 

The feeling was real. It was the presence of something. Not a thing or a spirit or anything like that. It was space. The feeling was of the hint of a space beyond the confines of the cottage. My hand went to the latch of the little back door. One bolt. Another. A chain too, all needing undoing. I lent back my weight and the door eased. With a woody squeak it jerked free from its jam. 

Swinging the door gently open, I stepped out. And there it was. The raw source of the feeling. The space that I had somehow sensed was enveloping the cosy and near silent cottage. A whole landscape. Audible by its near trees and far contours. Aural presences, stretching from the back door over miles up into the Quantocks. A night world shrouded in almost complete darkness, brushed by rain, and autumnal wind. This was the moment. This is what I heard. 

244 Rocky West Somerset beach (high-definition sound)

We found this quiet place in West Somerset. Afternoon waves softly breaking along a rocky beach under October sunshine. The low landscape of Wales visible across the water.

Lilstock. A port in bygone times, according to someone we met coming the other way. Now disused. A landscape of stony footpaths. Dense patches of shrubbery around outcrops of trees. Endless meadows and dry ditches. Fresh water streams and in the far distance on the clifftops, the boxy structures and cranes of Hinkley Point. 

Human made sound was present but what really drew our ears were the long periods of near pristine quiet. Quiet lets the aural detail of natural landscapes be truly seen. Here, a beach not of sand or shingle, but of piles of rocks and small boulders. We tied the Lento box to a tree off the footpath about thirty yards from the shoreline, and left it to record the breaking waves alone. A little cricket was cricketing in the grass to the left of the mics. For late October we were surprised.

As we walked away we saw a large plastic blue barrel, captured by high tide rocks, roll its way loose and into the water. Then we watched it for a while set sail in the onshore breeze whilst exploring the rocks and boulders in the fresh afternoon air. When we returned an hour or so later to collect the Lento box we could still see the barrel. It'd floated up the coast past the mics. Listening back to the recording we could  picture it, moving with the waves, from left to right of scene. One empty barrel that'd taken itself to sea, for a slow, silent voyage.

* Let us know if you think this episode is sleep safe. We know there are sounds of people (mainly us) playing distantly on the beach and for some this sense of the presence of people may feel sleep safe, but others perhaps not. 

243 Night callings in the Forest of Dean - interleaved worlds

It isn't often we hear strange calls coming out of our long overnight captures, but this was one. The dead of night deep in the Forest of Dean, and a call that from the quiet emptiness begins to echo. Human?  Dog?  Muntjac deer? All three, or none? Muntjac deer are commonly heard repeating a single harsh bark across rural landscapes at night though this sound doesn't quite match the sound signature of muntjac, nor indeed dog, or human. The calling persists over ten minutes, seemingly human, then changing into something very much not human. What it is we can't know. 

The sound comes from mid-left of scene. Whatever is making it is some distance from the microphones, which are tethered to the trunk of a huge oak tree growing beside a trickling brook hidden beneath dense undergrowth. To mid-right of scene is a country road that bisects the forest. Nocturnal cars occasionally speed through. The effect is curious, like a sudden wind is gathering in the trees, only to just as suddenly disappear. As the calling continues a tawny owl joins in. It hoots in that nervous kind of way they do sometimes, but then changes. Becomes a wavering quivering bleat, something like a new born lamb. It is fleeting. Then it is gone. 

Building ideas of what is in the world around us from this kind of highly spatial binaural soundscape, especially from times and locations few of us are used to being within, can lead our imaginations into strange places. Notions of the supernatural. Happenings and occurrences beyond the normal boundaries. However to the eye, and if it weren't pitch dark, the scene would bear no comparison to what the mind perceives of this forest through hearing. There'd be no overwhelming sense of wide open space, no possibility of reverberances or echoes or happenings going on far away. Indeed no concept of distance at all. This is because what surrounds the oak tree is of course more trees. Lovely huge trees, draped in broad waxy leaves so green and so numerous the eye simply accepts the image as one vast surface of textured colour. A vail. The green vails make this huge forest place, from an eye-s perspective, just what is close. A walled garden. Safe, because it is completely hidden from view. 

These very different perspectives of the same place reveal how hearing and sight fulfill substantially different roles when we are immersed in natural places. The hearing and sight we have was evolved in forest environments over millions of years. Within a world of green vails and visually obstructed views, sound travels freely, passes through leaves and around the solid structures of trees. Sound is spatial as sight is, has depth, width, and many other spatially sensitive qualities. It affords us with detailed information we need to gain a three dimensional spatial image of the world beyond what we can see. These complex interleaved vibrations land on our eardrums and are modelled spatially to alert us to the presence of things, what they are doing, and their location in space. But what sound also does, and what we as Lento are most intrigued to capture, is to convey and confirm to a vigilant mind that nothing is also happening. Not nothing as in silence. Instead, it is that sweet, soft, murmurating texture of half meaningful sound, like billowing fabrics, that simply say yes, the world is all there. 

* This segment is from a 72 hour non-stop recording we made in May 2022 in the Forest of Dean. After the callings and the owls are gone, a little creature can be heard scuffling and making tiny quivering tweeting sounds as it goes. Soft planes pass over this area, helping to dispel any notions that this strange sounding place is anything other than the familiar world we all live in. 

242 Kentish landscape time

Daytime contentedness can be found here. Between the rustling leaves and trees of Folkestone Warren that rolls greenly down towards the sea. We couldn't have known when we set up the Lento box under hot early August sunshine that the next day of recording would bring such strong breezes. 

This strip of natural Kentish land is made of green plunging wilderness. It has a campsite next to a rocky and sandy beach. There's a cliff top cafe too, from where you can see France on a clear day. After stopping for a cup of tea, follow one of the steep paths, down into a sea of green. Find a gap between the trees. Try listening for the actual sea. For echoes of children, distantly playing on the beach. For a passing train on the hidden railway. The buzzard. Slowly circling. 

Wind that waves in the branches, shakes and rustles the leaves, may not to the eye look particularly calm. And yet to the ear, these movements sound calm. We definitely feel a physical response to strong undulating breezes as they press and sigh through banks of trees.

This daytime section capturing the sound-feel of this place reveals how time passes here, an ordinary weekday in early August.

241 Natural white noise from Folkestone Warren beach at night (sleep safe)

An hour of uninterrupted white noise. Naturally occurring and fully spatial. Captured by the Lento box last weekend from a tree overlooking the beach under Folkestone Warren. Low soft rumbling of the crashing waves. Mid-range curtains of dark grey-blue backwash, that seem to billow and shimmer like hanging fabrics. Fine layers of crisper whiter noise, formed from the frothing and fizzing sea water as it is churned and blown by the night wind. The subtle hiss as countless leaves catch in the undulating wind. 

The scene is of the wide open beach. And of the tide, very gradually going out. A breeze, quite firm at around 18 knotts, is whisking up the waves. The place is entirely deserted. It's around 4:30 am. Several hours until dawn breaks. Being a raw location recording there are a few planes that traverse the sky, though their sound easily dissolves between the waves. Something, perhaps a small mammal, pads up to the tree holding the mics, then carries on to wherever it's going. A dark bush cricket occasionally starts up as well. It's quite late in the season for them.  

The ground underneath the tree holding the mics is layered in dry leaves left over from the summer. Just ahead, down a steep drop, the ground transitions into large jumbled boulders. This strip of loose rock is in range of the high tide, and probably is semi-submerged when the spring tide coincides with a North Sea surge. During the day people pick their way over these rocks in search of fossils. Folkestone is so we're told a fossil rich area.

Our objective for travelling back to this beach location in Folkestone was to capture the reflected sounds the high tide makes as it laps around the boulders under the trees. We witnessed these sounds earlier in August, but ran out of time to properly record them. Returning last weekend to try again we found there was an 18 knott wind whipping everything up, and a different and wilder seascape. What we have managed to capture though is how the receding tide in this particular location produces a rich and very stable source of uninterrupted natural white noise. Naturally occurring white noise sounds so simple and yet is infinitely complex. These seemingly contradictory qualities may be why natural white noise from real places like this promote both wakeful concentration and vigilant restfulness, that unconscious conscious state of mind where you seem to be able to perceive  everything around you as one fulfilling thought. A thought so in and of itself complete, it frees you from the need to think of anything else.

240 Wide time in the Kielder Forest (sleep safe with distant geese)

Last week we shared wide time captured from a North Norfolk beach as night fell. This week it's wide time from the vast interior of the Kielder Forest. Human-free night vastness is an experience so out of reach to us, and indeed to most people, that travelling with the Lento box to bring it back in the raw is always top of our list.

Kielder is a mostly uninhabited landscape made of hills, trees and water. It is England's largest fir plantation on the north east border with Scotland. You may remember we travelled there in May to find and capture new episodes. This section of time is from around 3am. The Lento box is recording alone laid against the trunk of a fir tree on the east side of the 9 mile long reservoir. 

The sound landscape of Kielder at night is extremely spatial and delicate. Made up of subtle changing movements of air over miles of fir trees. Of occasional nocturnal flying geese. Of echoes, layered upon echoes. Of tiny twigs and branches shifting as the trees gradually droop their boughs in response to the night cool. But these sounds though precious are not of themselves what makes the experience of being immersed within the Kielder Forest so special. And they are not the main aural presence we left the Lento box out alone to witness. 

What we wanted to capture from within Kielder above anything else, was the phenomenon of wide time. Wide time is not of itself audible. It's made of nothing. Or more accurately, emptiness. To gain a sense of wide time you have to allow yourself to mentally tune into it. And that takes time. And a quiet place to listen. And decent headphones or equivalent. And a long form spatial audio recording that comes directly from the natural emptiness of Kielder Forest at night. A place where wide time happens. 

239 Intertidal zone - night approaching

Holme Dunes, Norfolk. 

At low tide, and with night approaching, we finally managed to set up the Lento box on a tripod on the sand, mics facing out to sea. It was the curlews at dusk, framed within the vastness of the empty beach, that we wanted to capture as a photograph in sound. It felt good to have reached a spot to record, after a lot of walking. It was though still only the mid-point of the intertidal zone. A very low tide.  

The mid-point proved interesting. Such a low tide leaves exposed an enormous area of flat hard sand. The landscape seems to guide the sound of the sea into your ears over long distances, and from very wide angles. It's what we love the most. That feeling of being very very small in a vast open and entirely naturally formed space. Naturally formed, naturally murmurating, and with magical fleeting calls of curlew.

We explored the area around the box for a while, then realised we had a problem. Light. The levels had been dropping while we'd been walking. Ten minutes into the record we turned round from the end of the sunset and realised the land behind us had gone almost completely black. Getting up the beach would be ok but finding the narrow and indistinct footpaths where we'd come through the dunes was definitely not going to be ok. There were no street lights or navigation points. 

But the atmosphere was so exhilarating, so precious, we let the box record for just a few more minutes. We then scooped it up and hastily began the next mission, to find our way back. This is why episode 239 is shorter than usual. Shorter but we feel important to share because it conveys some of the sound-feel of being out in a vast intertidal zone, empty other than the curlew, with night fast approaching. 

238 Harvest fields aside The Peddars Way (100th location)

On the breeze, rich scents of hot Norfolk farmland. In the air, tiny wippling birds. Some swallows? Across the field, and across the next, a combine harvester large as a house. And quick as a car. It sails low over the far meadow, like a paddle steamer on a bright green sea.

Standing on the Peddars Way, Lento box in hand, we've stopped to take in the heat, and to listen. Wide carpets of crickets are cricketing all around the meadow grass. They're happy. Baking like us, under a hot midday sun. We search for a tree. For a natural tripod. We scan the thickets that line this ancient route. It is quite a silent process, and the box swings gently. It's waiting for us to find it a good spot.

The spot it needs is specific. An aural point in the landscape where everything meaningful can not just be heard but heard in a spatially balanced way. An aural meeting point where the box will "see" the whole landscape as a sound photograph. Eventually we find a very old oak tree completely covered in hairlike moss. It's amazing. Very carefully we rest the box between two intersecting boughs and check how the sound photograph is going to "look" through a pair of stereo headphones. Good we quietly say, providing this breeze doesn't ruffle the surrounding leaves too much. The weather seems fair and stable, so we leave the box to record alone. 

* We captured this sound-scene (our 100th unique location and 25th county) on Norfolk farmland on a hot July day. The old oak tree stands on the Peddars Way, a 49-mile National Trail which follows the route of a Roman Road. Tiny birds flit and flutter amongst the thickets under the wide sky where rumbles of distant military jets can sometimes be heard. A combine harvester is at work far right of scene. If you're able to hear high pitched crickets, their sound sometimes wafts in an out too from the meadow. Red kites overhead too. 

Thanks for listening, and to Lento supporters who've helped us to bring 100 UK landscape locations in high definition spatial sound to this free podcast service.

237 Sighing sea beyond the Warren

It is first light. Birds are waking. Beginning to fill the air with sonorous sounds of life. A few dark bush crickets are still cricketing, just, though soon they'll go quiet for the day. The view is of green. More green. And yet more green. A whole valley of thickly growing thickets, trees, and dense shrubs, slowly emerging into visual reality under an increasingly luminous dawn sky. 

Another form of energy that illuminates this steep verdant valley, is from the sea about a third of a mile down from the recording location. It's acoustic presence perfuses the air, just as light does from the sky. The aural daylight if we can call it that, is brightest at high tide, and darkest at low. Sea light does not flow evenly as light from the sky does. It flows in slow undulating breaths. Follows every contour of the ground. Brushes through every tree, branch, leaf and shrub. Reminds us that like the sky, a huge mass of something unimaginably huge, is there, and moving, beyond our view. 

* This is the third segment from the new series of sound landscape recordings we made last month at The Warren in Folkestone. Episode 235 was from the dead of night, and this segment is how dawn sounded at the same location.  

** NOT sleep safe due to noisy gulls and wood pigeons!

236 Sunlit beach below the Warren

Capturing the experience and 'sound-feel' of crashing waves is always a challenge. Strong on-shore breezes and the unbridled energy of thousand ton waves breaking over unyielding rock can simply be too much for sensitive microphones. Yet as we sit on the concrete sea defences, bathed in hot afternoon August sun, waiting for the first tingles of cold sea spray to land on our legs, the experience is as serene as it is thrilling. How can this be? Something huge, heavy and aurally overwhelming is also serenely calming and relaxing?

Our ears hear the landscape around us and let us feel its space and physicality. Hearing, in a way, is a kind of touching. Given the power and tumult of these waves as they break over the rocks, it isn't possible to be bodily touching them, but we can touch their weight and mass through our ears. Layers of white noise produced by crashing waves, rising and falling, folding over each other, straddling us with their weight, reveals how mere vibrations in the air that land on our eardrums are instantly sensed and translated into physical responses. Responses that are felt as a result of being heard. This is what we mean by 'sound feel'. We might say the thrill is the head's response, the excitement that comes with loudness and chaos. The serenity is the bodily response. Nerves, bones and muscles, relaxing, as they do when massaged. 

So sitting on the sea wall facing crashing waves, hot in the sunshine and still in earshot of the odd cricket hiding in the seagrass, is a bath and a massage. Wild sweet peas dancing in the breeze on an empty path. Buzzards circling overhead. We feel drawn to this ragged edge of land and to capture it as an audio experience that can be re-experienced when we cannot physically be there. 

* This piece of time we captured in early August from a nearby location to last week's episode (235) from Folkestone in Kent. This stretch of exposed beach at the foot of The Warren. Two perspectives on the same stretch of coast called the Strait of Dover. Without the sea, The Warren would not exist in the aurally rich way it does. 

235 Night crickets above distant crashing waves (sleep safe)

Welcome back to a new Lento season of captured quiet. Sound landscapes from real places. This segment of spatial audio, best through headphones, was captured on the Kent coast in early August from beside a winding path in a steeply wooded area of Folkestone called the Warren. France is visible from this elevated spot. Around half a mile below, is the beach and the crashing waves. It is midnight. 

The ground here is sandy and dry. The only way through is the path which winds down and around and down again, almost endlessly, between trees huddled behind thick shrubs and blackberry bushes. Eventually you come out by a railway line. It seems out of place so close to the sea. Before you reach the beach, there's a cluster of tall trees with long rope swings. The environment is so green and steep and tangled that it has a uniquely soft sound feel.  

Here, on this August night, dark bush crickets form the main sound-scene against a back drop of distant crashing waves. One stridulates close to the Lento box. Another type of cricket, lower in tone, is audible over to the left. We have not heard this type of night cricket in England before. A few trains pass in the valley below, and a few planes too, though Folkestone has generally quite a quiet sky. 

To get the true aural essence from this audio, which is from an exceptionally soft and quiet location where you'd need to strain your ears to hear everything that is there, try to listen with headphone volume set so you can just hear the murmurings of the sea below. Find somewhere quiet to listen to this episode and you'll get more from it. 

234 Wild and exposed places - Intermission 4

Welcome to this final intermission of August 2024, a specially blended episode of soundscapes from wild and exposed places taken from the last year of Lento. The first three sound-scenes reveal aural views of the outside world seen from within interior places. A coastal hotel room, the belfry of an ancient church, and inside a bird hide. The final sound-scene is of an exposed estuary by Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex, and a slow passing ship. Each portrays the essences of wild places.  

214 Storm over hotel peninsula

A birds ear view over Plymouth in the far south west of England. This is how Storm Kathleen sounded from behind the huge plate glass window of a comfortable cushioned room on the fourth floor of a hotel. The hotel overlooks a district called The Hoe, where one of the original Eddystone Lighthouses now stands. the wind was fierce, whistling almost singing through the window seals. A blended soundscape, formed from the interior acoustic of the hotel room and the wide open windswept night beyond. 

200 Windswept night in the belfry of Rye Church

Up steep ladders on the top platform of the belfry inside Rye Church, the ancient clock counts through this small night hour. Its regular sound blends with long and undulating gusts of fresh sea air. Air that's travelled, over miles of sand, shingle and marshland, from out on the open sea. Moving air sighs between the shuttered rafters and rattles the steel flagpole outside on the castellated parapet wall. Knocks the dead weight of a loose slab of stonework out on the belfry roof. 

194 Inside a bird hide

The atmosphere inside a bird hide is quite unusual, as interior spaces go. Low wind moaning in the drooping wires between telegraph poles. Whispering rushes and siffing seed heads of marsh grasses. Indistinguishable shifting murmurings, of the surrounding landscape, blown in through low letterbox windows. To the ear there is a lot of outside to be heard inside a bird hide. A fleeting curlew. A humming propeller plane. A distant pair of passing footsteps on the gravel towpath. 

196 Estuary bleak passing ship

Warm inside an all-weather coat and facing out across the water. Sat, boots wedged against the top ridge of the slanted seawall. There's rain in the air. Time to take in this wild estuary place. Right of scene the small Essex town of Burnham-on-Crouch. Directly ahead across the water Wallasea Island. Left of scene wild swirling water stretches seven miles to the North Sea. Sit tight, here on the seawall. This is empty time, to listen to the landscape and a slow passing ship.