153 Freezing January rain under Britain’s highest pylon (sleep safe)

Full Episode description

At over 600 feet high, and visible for miles, this giant mass of steel pylon on Swanscombe Marsh on the Thames Estuary has a sister. They stand together, like monoliths either side of the sprawling Thames, holding up cables, and silently serving society’s insatiable thirst for power.

After a shortish walk over the marsh from Swanscombe station, we arrived at the pylon on the Kent side bank. The ground directly beneath the pylon, in between its concrete footings, is flat. Barren, and crackling, under sharp pelting winter rain. Cold and already soaked, we unpack the audio equipment from our dripping rucksack and set up to record. As we pulled out its foldable legs, the mic stand oddly mirrored, on an atomic level, the skyscraper above.

We walked on along the new extension of the Thames Path and England Coast Path, and left the mics to record. Their job to capture, uninterrupted, this brutal sound landscape, and to whatever noises the pylon made. 

The sharp winter rain. The spatial murmurations of this panoramic edgeland world. The rushing sometimes humming noise the wind fleetingly made, as it surged through the loftiest sections of the pylon (centre of scene). The deep pulsating rumble, that we later found (when speeded up) seem to be the long span powerlines, singing subsonically in the wind. A brutally beautiful day under Britain’s highest pylon.

*The last time we recorded on Swanscombe Marsh (summer 2021) we heard a cuckoo. Amazing! This still surviving natural land is so much more than meets the eye. Listen to episode 77.