Radio Lento
Not specifically for children, but each episode features a lovely landscape sound postcards in 3D immersive sound. Best with earphones. Listen while reading, resting or being mindful.
Not specifically for children, but each episode features a lovely landscape sound postcards in 3D immersive sound. Best with earphones. Listen while reading, resting or being mindful.
Episode One: Episode 1 – Suffolk wood at 6amCreated by: Hugh Huddy
Started: March 29th, 2020
Status: Active, 290 episodes
Kind: Episodic
Language: English

<a href="https://soundcarrot.com/shows/shows/radio-lento/page/30/" title="SoundCarrot.com - Children's podcasts"><img src="https://soundcarrot.com/img/sc-sm.png" alt="Listen On SoundCarrot" style="width: 200px; height: auto" /></a>When the bell of St Mary’s strikes 2am, and the world has dissolved into shadows and echoes of far away things, there’s a solace to be found in counting the chirps of a dark bush cricket. When all that is near is a loose twig falling, a small mammal, biding its time between a fleeting moment of stealth, and the semblance of a nocturnal breeze seems to be somewhere around, high up in the trees, there is a reason to let go of the urge to track time. Let the night planes take it. Let them draw it away in their soft rumbling arcs, away and over the dark curve of the Earth. And don’t worry. They’ll be sure to leave it where you can find it. It’ll be there when you arrive. There on the cusp of dawn. Here, in this rural Suffolk wood, in this safe and empty place, on this calm August night when thoughts can be let go to float down into the leaves, its the trees who’ll stand over.
On the beach, sat within wetting distance of the water’s edge, there’s a point where the noise from the container port begins to meld in with the shingle soft washing to and fro of the waves. Here, about a quarter of a mile away, towering gantry cranes can be seen whining backwards and forwards, deftly hoisting lorry-sized containers like little matchboxes from an impossibly vast supership. Venus, mega-sized, operated by China Shipping Container Lines, and with a warehouse-sized engine and chimney that throbs and pulsates the sea air for miles around. On this, a weekday last summer, the port and all of its rumblings form nothing more than a backdrop to what beaches are really for. Playing. Oblivious children constantly on the move run soaked and delighted to their families before rushing back to get ankle-deep in the waves again. Parents warn there’s a stranded jellyfish, while claxons and two-tone sirens announce the peril of yet another swooping crane, on the horizon. There’s a jagged beauty to all of this, a form of shoreline brutalism.
It was our first visit to Bayford Wood. A country walk, on a bright July day which was not quite as warm as it should be. A walk under an undecided sky, from time-to-time enhanced with inexplicable flurries of raindrops that fell like scattering beads. As we followed the track deeper into the woods, surrounded by tall trees, long growing and cathedral high, a small propeller plane buzzed over. It made us look. Then, with the quiet returned, our ears became tuned to the presence of countless myriad things high above us. Whispering things, hissing things, softly shushing things, filtering down their fine gossamer sounds in slow undulating waves. Lung easing. Chest expanding. Mind cleansing. All from up in the vaulted ceiling of green, forty feet above, millions upon millions of leaves, set in tiny individual motions by the breeze. We found a grassy bank set back from the track, pushed through a hedge of ivy, and left the microphones alone to record while we went off to brew tea on a camping stove.
It’s all woods and rolling fields in rural Bedfordshire. Good for long walks under wide skies. A chance to get away from it all. On a wet February day, after splashing along muddy lanes and mud sliding footpaths, after passing a pair of Anderson shelters either side of an empty and waterlogged field, we saw a tumbledown wall cloaked in moss. Behind the wall, tucked down in a shallow dell, so quiet it hardly reached us, the melodious sound of a running winterbourne. Watery places always seem to cast a magic spell. So we climbed through the spiky trees peppered with lichen and left the microphones to record. It felt like a long forgotten spot, set back from people and the Iron Age track. When they were sure we had gone, tiny birds returned to flit about, distant cows lowed as the rain gently sifted down through the bare branches. A silvery sounding place, cool, and clean of clutter. In a few months the leaves will come, the fields will dry, and the landscape will sound of spring.
Dusk. The gates of the Lee Valley Park are shut. The people are gone. The miles of footpaths are empty, save for crossing ducks. Beside Norman’s Pond, hidden in the scrub, the dark bush crickets have begun. Gulls cry out. On tepid summer water, swans are swimming, slow under the gathering shadows, drippling the mirror-still surface for food. Their calls bounce and echo across the empty lake. Melding with the sound of passing trains. With the tidal flow of the A10, London’s artery into rural Hertfordshire.
There is a time when thin light broadens into day, when the sun is properly up and warm and every diurnal creature is settling into its daily rhythm. A time when the delicate trickles of the night stream can no longer be heard as the ambient sound within the forest has grown into a mellifluous hum, made up of birdsong, gentle wind, and of buzzing bees. It’s the time before most people are awake, where all natural things are up and weaving themselves back into their world, threading their strands of aural colour through each and every tree, each and every tangled vine. An early corner of the day most often unheard. This episode, discovered in our archive due to ongoing lockdown restrictions, is the forest in late May 2019, just before 6am. Other parts of this same all-night recording can be heard in episodes 17, 30 and 38 (visit our blog for links to them all). We made this recording by leaving a pair of rain-proofed microphones hooked up to a field recorder on a long-life battery, hidden up against the trunk of an ancient oak tree, in a remote clearing inaccessible to people.
Locked-down and nowhere to go. With pounded pavements all pounded, and back gardens beleaguered under pallid skies so dull sodden with wet, it’s hard to remember the feeling of travelling out of London to walk free through a forest in barmy summer heat. It feels important to think of it now though. More than ever. Really think of it. Reawaken it. The experience of a late summer walk through the Bayford Pinetum in Hertfordshire.
Every year, on or near the 4th of April, we leave the microphones out in the back garden to record the dawn chorus. It’s a simple ritual, partly to mark the beginning of a new season, and partly to compare how the dawn chorus sounds now compared to last year. Despite us living in Hackney in the North East of London, where the buildings and roads don’t change much, the soundscape from year to year does. It’s always different. We’ve been making these recordings for 12 years and, not surprisingly, last year saw the most dramatic change. London was in its first lockdown. The schools were closed, the roads mostly empty, reduced to a fraction of the normal traffic. And the skies had fallen silent. No more planes chasing the tail of another, minute by minute. As the day dawned and the sky lightened, the gardens behind the terraced houses woke to high circling seagulls and silky soft birdsong. Unimaginable, impossible in any other year. Gone the rumble and whining of jet engines, gone the rattling bumps of cars on speed bumps. Gone the heavy grey noise, the aural fog that coagulates the air. Instead see-sawing great tits, echoing, crisp and pure. The jovial cooing of wood pigeons. The cawing of rooks. Some screeching green parrots on a mission to get somewhere else fast, and little delicate chittering birds commuting from roof to roof. And like an operatic performer, like a musical instrument perched in a tree, the most totemic of garden birds began to sing its song. Melodious. Perfectly clear. Wonderfully inventive. Inflecting notes of cheer and even glee, as it embarks upon its journey into spring. A blackbird.
Created by: Hugh Huddy
Started:
March 29th, 2020
Status: Active, 290 episodes
Kind: Episodic
Language: English
When Chloe is sent off to live with her mysterious and eccentric grandmother she learns an unbelievable secret. Grandma Ivy is none other than Mother Nature herself! And Chloe is next in line to assume to the power and responsibility of the job. Can a twelve-year old learn to balance the entire world’s ecosystem while just trying to fit in at her new school? Only Mother Nature knows.
Find your next favourite Podcast
Sound Carrot is your source for Family Podcast Discovery. Verified awesome, 0% boring.
Privacy Focused
Distraction free website, no flashing banners or adverts to steal your attention.
(Some shows do contain their own ads however).
Kid verified
At first I made this site for my kids, but like any dad I got a little over excited. I hope you find it as useful as they do.
Whether you want to listen to them together in the car, or alone in your room - the content is all safe for younger ears.
This is just so relaxing to listen to.