Miller's Dale. Steep sided. A valley in the Derbyshire Dales with magnificent contours. High rocky outcrops. Sheer faced cliffs. Green fields plunging down to a quiet, winding river.
It's a place where geologists go, to see the evidence of lava flows from millions of years ago. Where historians go, to marvel at Victorian viaducts and tunnels cut by hand in the 1800s. And where weekend people go to trek or cycle through open country along the disused railway lines that used to carry the trains between Manchester and London.
Miller's Dale feels cut off from the world. Alive in the moment, but somehow separated. As you wonder its winding and overgrown footpaths, you sense the valley is a place not only of restorative solitude, but a place where you are free to imagine yourself conscious in another time. Another era. Hearing the echoes of a rumbling steam train, chuffing northwards with Victorian haste. The meek baas of sheep, grazing on wet Iron Age pastures. Or the tide of the bygone sea, that the composition of the rocks shows this landscape almost unimaginably used to be.
Now the sound of water flowing is from the river. the River Wye. How steadily it runs, along the valley bottom. Open country water, that along the shallow stretches rills, pleasantly, over tumbled stones. Cool. Refreshing. Consistent. Rilling in watery melodies, if you let yourself listen for long enough.
* We left the Lento mics alone, hanging from a steeply leaning tree, to capture the spatial sound of the River Wye flowing through the night. Some planes are audible in the sky, possibly more than usual for 2am, due to a major air traffic control breakdown the night before.
Night tide turning at pillbox point (sleep safe)
Afternoon meadow in late summer
Down at the marina on a weekday in August
Suffolk Wood (part 9) - the hour before dawn with owls and nocturnal animals
82 Hill top oak in strong wind - a natural source of white noise (sleep safe)
Rising tide in the rock garden - the sea wall near Bradwell-on-Sea
A doze in the grass on Wallasea Island (High-def sound and sleep safe)
Essence of estuary
78 The birds that sing on the cusp of night - a leafy ravine in the Peak District (sleep safe after 16 mins)
77 The cuckoo of Swanscombe Marsh
Last pasture before the sea - Winchelsea to Rye
75 Yacht masts on the estuary at Wrabness (part 1)
74 Night shallowing in a Suffolk Wood - listen with headphones (sleep safe)
Slow rhythms of the Hoo Peninsula
The tunnel, the towpath and the window - under the M6 at Spaghetti Junction
Wading cows and a passing cuckoo - the lakes and woodland of Chatsworth
70 - Blue sky. Empty beach. Low tide.
Time beside a stream in the Welsh hills
Birdsong in rain from inside the derelict chapel at Abney Park nature reserve
May rain after daybreak
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