This is a segment of time from a clearing deep in the Forest of Dean. Echoing birds in full voice. Soft hushing breezes in high treetops. Then, over time, a band of fresh summer rain, falling in rich spatial detail over countless broad-leaved trees. It's a natural environment. The sort of place people travel to, to get away from it all. To get a dose of green health, because it ticks all the boxes. It's remote. Proper countryside. Far away from major roads and industrialised, built-up areas. So, a place where unnatural noise should be almost non-existent.
To get here we travelled several hundred miles by train with our audio equipment, staying in the Gloucestershire town of Lydney. We covered the last five miles on foot. We found the same tree we recorded from back in 2019 and set our mics beside it to record on their longest mission so far.
Hooked up to a huge battery, we left them alone to record non-stop over a four-day period. We imagined how we'd capture the sounds of woodcock on their twilight roding flights. Owls hooting in the dead of night. Brilliantly songful dawn choruses. Hours of pure birdsong in the warm daylight. All pure and free of human-made noise.
We have managed to capture these amazing sounds, but what's also revealed is just how much human-made noise there is too. We've not been able to find natural daytime quiet lasting for more than about 15 minutes. From aircraft to the exhaust sounds of motorbikes and other motor transport, the sound-feel of the forest is strongly shaped by unnatural things.
The natural environment is recognised as vitally important to our health and wellbeing, but it's highly permeable to unnatural noise which can carry over many miles.
Its effect on the experience of being within nature can be heard in this episode, particularly over the first five minutes. It shows how just one passing motorbike becomes the main sound feature of the forest for a significant portion of time. How the number of journeys that people make, in that area and the design of the machines they use, combine over time to interrupt and break up the forest's own natural sound presence.
141 Soft land murmuring - Wooler, Northumberland
140 Fishing village harbour at night (sleep safe)
139 Old rafters brewing storm
138 Ocean peace above Folkestone beach (sleep safe)
137 Night rains amongst moorland trees (sleep safe)
136 Curling folding breaking waves (high-definition sound and sleep safe)
134 Night waves rolling onto Coldingham Sands (sleep safe)
133 Vivid rain - rolling thunder (very spatial experience with headphones)
132 A bird watcher’s outpost beneath the telegraph wires
131 A thousand years along the Creel Path
Daydream 4 - water rain wind
Daydream 3 - rain water woods (new material coming soon)
Daydream 2 - lazy summer days
Daydream 1 (a series of short August adventures)
130 Dartmoor stream above waterfall gorge - hydrotherapeutic + * sleep safe*
129 Pristine quiet to early dawn (includes woodcock roding calls in full spatial detail)
128 Persistent rain (long, sleep safe, may ease heat fatigue when used in combination with a fan)
127 Mirrored ambiences from a summer meadow at Wrabness
126 The seawall and the night patrolling curlews (quiet, long, sleep safe)
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