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.
Created by: Hugh Huddy
Started: March 29th, 2020
Status: Active, 268 episodes
Kind: Episodic
Language: English
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It’s 1am. In a remote wood set amongst steeply sloping fields above the now infamous Todbrook reservoir in Whaley Bridge Derbyshire. Heavy drops of rain have started to fall. Each fleeting drop punctuates the night air. A pair of owls appear from nowhere, calling to each other. The last flights to Manchester airport make their way over the moor. A restless lamb bleats. Hidden in almost complete darkness the rain reveals to the ear the thick canopy of leaves above. There is no wind. the trees are still. A single pinprick light glows far away over the moor. It’s the last streetlight that marks the outer boundary of the town that lies a mile down the valley. Time passes. The rain gradually gets heavier.
It is 3am. At the water’s edge, the shadows are thick. A single star reflects in the ink black water, bobbed by passing ripples. The wide-open waterscape is alive with the sound of birds, swimming and calling, drippling the surface of the water for food, cleaning their wings, landing and taking off. Something creeps through the foliage nearby, perhaps a swan in search of a place to settle. The air’s still balmy from the hot day before. Soft breezes come and go, rustling the leaves of the over-hanging trees. In woodland across the lake, muntjacs invisibly call to each other, their dog-like barks carrying easily over the water. Miles beyond, undulating waves of traffic flow along the A10, sounding sometimes like distant wind. This recording was made in July. Microphones were hidden in a tree on the edge of the lake and left to record all night. The location was hidden away from the path, tucked down a shallow bank behind dense trees, nettles and brambles. A special spot known only to birds, insects and mammals.
In the middle of a sundrenched field in Gilston Park near Harlow in Essex, a crow calls far-off to the left, a bird scarer fires shots to the right. It’s a warm afternoon and there’s a brisk August wind blowing across the landscape. Sitting beneath the vast boughs of an ancient Oak, shoulder-high grasses, thistles and sappling hawthorns hiss and flail in the wind. Dead branches reach out like arms, while green leaves on the healthy branches bounce and rustle. A bird comes to perch nearby. A fleeting fly whizzes past the microphones. From time-to-time the wind drops, and the A414 can be heard in the distance. Filtered by distance through acres of grass, the roadlike qualities are gone. It has become a soft wide noise across the horizon, a waterless tidal flow.
Sitting on a warm shingle beach where the river Deben joins the North Sea, feet stretched into the cool water. It’s a hot afternoon and the ferry over to Bawdsey has made its last crossing of the day. Waves wash over the fine shingle, shifting and sieving, sweeping to and fro, fizzing and receding. A little way over on the right, a rock pool fills and empties with the swell. Seagulls fly out over the estuary mouth towards the sea. Small motor boats pass. Tilled up by the action of the waves a fragment of stone tinkles like a bright piece of metal. There’s a gentle onshore breeze. Towards the end, the soft sound of a high altitude jet becomes a rumble that dissolves into the eastern sky.
Forty minutes walk from Stanford-le-Hope railway station, along residential avenues and a service road that leads to the nature reserve, past a single story brick built municipal transformer station that hummed in the hot afternoon sun, down a stony footpath where we stopped to pick blackberries and over the freight railway line to the nearby London Gateway deepwater container port via the level crossing, we found this hidden away beach. It is set back from the main channel of the Thames in a small bay. The beach was empty except for one other family. We put the microphones to record in a sheltered spot and retired to brew tea on a camping stove, then relaxed to the lapping waves and the sound of the children playing happily in the sand. This is almost twenty four minutes of pure bliss As the tide goes out and the waves change. The engine of a marine vessel moored some way off emits a low bass note. Occasionally a deep industrial thud can be heard from the container port. Towards the end the mud slightly fizzes as it is exposed to the air. A lone bird calls faintly as it scours the fresh mud for food. A propellor plane hums distantly over in the South West.
Beside the A10 flyover in the Hertfordshire countryside, crickets bask in summer heat and road noise. The flyover has been designed to reduce the noise and impact of the road across the valley. It isn’t perfect. Leaks in its noise barriers made the passing traffic sound like objects shooting along a tube. From a certain angle the cars seem to vanish in mid air. Far over on the right, as cars join the bridge on stilts, each makes a loud thump, like a giant see-saw. This is a section from the start of the New River Path between Hertford and Ware. **Re-issued in high-definition sound.**
The Lee Valley reservoir chain comprises thirteen lakes that separate the London Boroughs of Haringey and Enfield to the west from Waltham Forest and Essex in the east. The area is made up of marshes and parkland, rich in wildlife, including woodland and water birds. This recording is of the dawn chorus around 5am when nobody is around. It was captured by a pair of microphones looking out over the lake from a tree that overhangs the water’s edge in the Fishers Green Nature Reserve. It starts gently, water birds dabbling around for food, and builds up over 40 minutes to swirling raucous gulls and flapping flocks of geese taking off and landing, against a backdrop of woodland birds from the surrounding area, and the sound of distant traffic on the A10. It’s a surcluded spot on the soily bank, almost close enough to dip your feet in, hidden under trees, an ideal position to listen to life on the lake.
Over the hills above the sun is going down. It’s been a warm dry April day along the Kerry Ridgeway. High pressure, light breezes. It’s late afternoon and cars, tractors, farm vehicles and the odd lorry rattle past. Hidden behind hedgerows down a steep bank a timeless stream flows under trees. It is alive with birds. The ground is ankle deep with dry leaves. Occasionally a roving bee comes along, to look at the microphones. This is a secluded spot in a wide open landscape of steep fields and woodland.
Created by: Hugh Huddy
Started:
March 29th, 2020
Status: Active, 268 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.
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