281 Night rain in the Pyrenees (sleep safe with chimes)

Full Episode description

Beside the only road leading out of Sant Llorenc de la Muga we found a small group of trees. We didn’t have much time. The sky was pitch black and the ground beneath our feet was streaming with water that’d all come down a few minutes ago in a deluge with simultaneous flashes of forked lightening so powerful, so bright, they’d temporarily frozen us to the spot. We shone our torch from tree to tree, searching for a suitable trunk that might provide some shelter for the Lento box. The road was deserted. Traffic was not an issue. Only one more village lay beyond, where the road literally ended. 
   
A patch of bare trunk came into view between rain soaked leaves. Around us every thing glistened. And dripped. Every shrub. Every branch. Every leaf.  To the eyes and to the ears it was a rich sparkling sensory experience, that seemed interchangeable. Reaching through we tied the Lento box onto the trunk, angled it onto the wide landscape scene, and left it to record alone through the night. 

This segment of time was captured from just before 3am to just after 4am. Heavy rain falls and the sky periodically grumbles with thunder, but eventually it eases off. To the right of scene one and sometimes more tiny beeps can be heard from time to time. We aren’t sure what creatures make these delicately fleeting sounds. Frogs perhaps, lizards, or insects? The sounds are both soft and yet very distinguishable in the soundscape, and comforting for some curious reason. The medieval clock on the church of Sant Llorenc strikes the quarters and the hours through the night. Ancient bells seem even more enchanting when heard in the dead of night, and through crystal clear rain.