278 Lento Long – Quantocks collection (180 minutes)

Full Episode description

It’s August intermission time! This year we’ve decided to bring together recordings from various locations in a specific geographic area and share them as a very long non-stop episode. 

This is our first ever “Lento Long” and is a sumptuous 3 hours. Listen and let the places work their magic on you. 

Depending on your own personal sensitivities to human made sound, it may be sleep safe. Children can be heard throwing rocks into the sea at the beginning, and at just over an hour a microlight gradually drones over the beach. For us this creates a wonderful sense of beach-time, where nothing in the world feels urgent anymore, but not everyone may respond in the same way so we haven’t officially labelled this Lento Long as *sleep safe*.

Here’s a guide to what you’ll hear.

– The first hour is from the edge of the rocky beach at Lilstock in West Somerset, your back lent against a comfortable tree as the waves wash left to right with the longshore drift. 
– At one hour this blends into the rarified ambience of Kilve beach at low tide, a soundscape carried into awareness with the gradual progression of a little microlight that slowly drones over high above.
– At one hour thirty, day becomes night. A weatherfront is passing over a remote cottage half way up West Quantoxhead. Fresh currents of Somerset air press freely through a bank of trees behind the cottage, setting their leaves and branches swaying, and hushing in richly undulating white noise. 
– At just after two hours thirty, you invisibly reappear, sitting beside a secluded stream farther up the hill. You’re listening to the pristine sound of water flowing off the top of West Quantoxhead, with the gentle company of two resting sheep nearby. 

The episodes we blended together to make this Lento Long are 244, 254, 248, 255 and 249, where you can read in detail about each location. They were all recorded in late October 2024.

We’ll release another Lento Long next week and resume the weekly service from the start of September.

Thanks to everyone for listening.