269 Night crickets distant waves – Folkestone Warren (sleep safe)

Full Episode description

At this spot, high up on The Warren, in the dead of night, live the crickets. They’re everywhere. Stridulating, like tiny minute hands etching the moments, of this night’s time passing. Crisp. Unwitnessed. They’re probably dark bush crickets.

The Lento box records the scene alone, on a warm night last August. Tied to a very difficult tree. Difficult because it was very spiny. And off the path, part way down a precipitous drop. Why not an easier tree? Because of the view. This tree looks out over the valley, over all the tree tops, towards the hushing sea, far below. 

Time passes. Somewhere in the valley, an ocean breeze lows in. Shifts a bank of trees into a state of gentle rustling. Countless crickets mark the moments. Then from nowhere a nocturnal train materialises in the bottom of the valley, right of scene. It glides across, and into the left horizon. Further and further. Until finally, it dissolves, and becomes just another part of this place’s subtle, and natural murmurings. Perhaps a hedgehog is moving in the bushes. And a hint of a plane, heading south east towards France.

* This 50 minute section is from a 48 hour recording we made in Folkestone Warren last August. It captures a deeply peaceful scene of this green and tangled place, by the sea, and the endlessly breaking waves of the Channel. Listen carefully (with headphones or airpods) and you may catch sound of a lower pitched cricket to left of scene. We still aren’t sure what exactly it is, but it sounds like the cicadas in old films from 1950s America.