Daydream 4 – water rain wind

Full Episode description

Children play on a soft sandy beach by the Essex Wildlife Trust nature reserve at Stanford-le-Hope. When the tide goes out, this amazing hidden beach is revealed. Water laps. Families bask in the sun. Distant engines of passing marine vessels thrum the air. It’s hard to believe that this is reclaimed, re-wilded industrial land.

As east as you can go, deep amongst the sedge grass on Wallasea Island the temperature climbs above 30 degrees. Insects busy and buzz on hot rising thermals. Warm wind whirls and whisps. Here, below the footpath, near an inlet brimming with water, a pocket of perfect summer quiet simmers in the heat haze.

Low tide on an empty shingle beach near Felixstowe Ferry, with the waves rolling in. The sun is high in the sky, shining almost directly down onto a calm North Sea. Blue sky. Nobody about. Far away on the horizon you see a container ship is about to disappear over the horizon. Time just to stand, and imagine where it might be going, and enjoy the spatial sound of waves advancing and retreating around your feet.

In-land now. Rain. Heavy rain. Persistent rain. When a gloriously refreshing soundscape comes to you, and begins to land all about. All about your home, the space around your home, and the streets and gardens nearby. Millions and millions of tiny percussive drops, falling, and landing, from invisible high up clouds. Each drop ends its long downward journey, on top of an upturned plant pot. An old paint tin. A concrete paving stone. A tarpaulin stretched over a little back yard. And there it is. Bliss! 

Free moorland wind gusts through the branches of an old, lone oak tree. It stands tall, in the corner of a windswept field, beside a gritstone wall and a metal gate, that chinks, and an ancient footpath. A Peak District tree, with wide reaching bows laden with wind catching leaves. How many storms has this tree survived? How many droughts? How many days of grey? And of bright afternoon sun, like this one, where country walkers pass from time to time. This is the unique sound that this tree makes, high on a hill above the railway line between Chinley and Edale, Derbyshire.

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Don’t forget that from next Saturday we’re back to our normal service posting up a new and unique piece of captured quiet every week.

For now here’s where to listen to the full episodes from this final daydream:

• 24 – Peace beside the tidal Thames near Stanford-le-Hope in the county of Essex (24 minutes)
• 80 – A doze in the grass on Wallasea Island (39 minutes) 
• 70 – Blue sky. Empty beach. Low tide. (36 minutes)
• 128 – Persistent rain (51 minutes) 
• 82 – Hill top oak in strong wind (42 minutes)