The Lynton Cliff Railway1 runs between the upstation in Lynton, 500 feet about the downstation in Lynmouth. It’s certainly a walk worth avoiding!
Start of the journey on the Lynton cliff Railway. Bell rings, gates are closed and the carriage starts to trundle down the track. This was built in 1890 and is water powered – water piped from the river is poured into a 700 gallon tank at the top station, and the carriage descends, which pulls the one at the down station up via the steel ropes. The water is discharged at the bottom.
the upstation showing the pulley and cables running on rollers down the middle of the tracks
The queue for the journey back was massive, so I walked back up. I stopped at the bridge over the track to record the sound of the cables running over the rollers along the middle of the track
Bridge over the track – a z-shaped winding path
The cars go up and down frequently so it doesn’t take too long to get one, but if the queue reaches the Exmoor information centre at Lynmouth as it did one day, it takes about half an hour to get to the carriage.
Avebury features a large prehistoric stone circle encompassing the village.
These Morris dancers performed English Country Garden near the NT cafe on a warm sunny day in late September. Somehow fitting with the prehistoric circle and the ambiance of the site.
The sounds of summer at Bawdsey in the school holidays – a motorboat starts up and moves off, and then the passenger ferry arrives from Felixstowe Ferry
Bawdsey looking towards Felixstowe FerryBawdsey Beach
A couple of jetskis in the distance and lots of people enjoying the summer sun. Recorded for the short-lived British Library Sounds of our Shores project.
I went to university at Imperial College, in the chi-chi London district of South Kensington. The area has much to offer the field recordist in terms of resonant public spaces. If you want to avoid the rain or simply enjoy the soundscape you can take the long pedestrian tunnel under Exhibition Road from the tube station to the museums.
I recently returned to Imperial and went to the Alumni reception who served excellent coffee, gratis. It’s a world away from the machine coffee and plastic cups and ‘coffee whitener’ that fuelled my studies in the Physics department many years ago. The entrance to the College from Exhibition Road is now an enclosed space with lots of glass and hard surfaces, it has an interesting acoustic of its own – I recorded this space from next to the statue of Queen Mary
Footfall Foley wizards will hear the tapping aren’t high heels which most people would associate with the percussive sound but Blakeys on a man’s shoes.
South Kensington has three lovely Victorian museums. Massive galleried spaces over several floors and often a curved vaulting ceiling. These are just made for binaural stereo!
I went to the Science Museum in Exhibition Road, part of a cluster of Victorian Museum buildings. The others are the Victoria and Albert and the Natural History Museum. The latter has an amazing curved atrium and a fine acoustic space.
In the Science Museum on the ground floor near the space exhibition
the next recording is from the Energy exhibition on the second floor, looking over the massive open space to the steam engines on the ground floor
the sharp snap at 00:32 is an art exhibit marked do not touch, which of course everyone touches, resulting in a spark and a slight shock to the curious.
I enjoyed the visit and the incidental soundscapes. It is also good that Britain ended its dalliance with charging for museum entry.
South Kensington Tube station is the gateway to some of London’s famous museums – the Natural History museum, the Victoria and Albert and the Science Museum. To save people getting wet or wrangling the traffic along Exhibition Road, there is a long pedestrian walkway from the station to the museums.
It has a fabulous acoustic, one that’s enjoyed by small children, buskers and field recordists alike! I went to university at Imperial College and used this tunnel often. Even now, the soundmark takes me back to student times…
Here’s the sound of a busker using the acoustic well, and some kids enjoying the tunnel later on
There is a little nature reserve by the canal near the football ground, an oasis of calm. The water is sluggish with green on top apart from where the water seems to well up from the river bed in these gently roiling clear pools. I don’t think the water makes any sound here, there is some background traffic noise which would mask it.
The nature reserve was improved by the Access to Nature project in 2012. It’s easy to be cynical about some of these projects but this one seems to have worked really well, and there was a lot more birdsong in this part of path by the canal than in the unimproved bits.
Flock of Jackdaws with young in trees by playing fields and trees by the River Test in Whitchurch. The calls of the young from all around come out in this binaural recording.
