Enquiring Ear

Field recording and found sounds

Tag: urban

  • Lynton Cliff Railway

    Lynton Cliff Railway

    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.

    1. Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway website ↩︎
  • Morris dancing, Avebury

    Morris dancing, Avebury

    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.

    Binaural OKMII

    on radio aporee

  • Eerie call of Tawny Owls hooting in the evening

    Eerie call of Tawny Owls hooting in the evening

    This tawny called near the doorway of a holiday cottage in Sidmouth. It’s a lovely evocative sound. I hear them at home too, they’re common as muck according to the RSPB distribution map. This one was disturbingly close, and he was getting a reaction from another tawny. Presumably saying keep off my lawn in Owl language.

    Olympus LS14 XY

    Tawnies have a rep for being pugnacious and you can’t hear ’em coming . The photographer Eric Hosking lost an eye to one. I stood in the doorway, the dishwasher was running so it makes a faint background, as do the neighbours. It was a surprising encounter in Cheese Lane, Sidmouth – a row of terraced houses surrounded by other housing.

    The picture’s not of this owl. Looks a bit odd for a tawny but it was a WordPress freebie. There’s a bit of an AI feel to it. The straight AI offering had gorgeous eyes but was spooky.

    Owls are spooky enough on their own without added AI creepiness

  • Sidmouth Beach kayakers

    Sidmouth Beach kayakers

    Sidmouth is quite genteel through the week, it livens up a bit towards the weekend. I was recording the sound of the sea on the shingle beach when these kayakers were finishing up. They dragged their kayaks across the beach to get a break to go to get a bite to eat.

    Kayakers training on the sea, apparently transferring between boats!

    Olympus LS14 XY

    A little further to the west the cliffs rise steeply. A path leads round to Chit rocks and to the dog beach and steps to the Jacob’s Ladder cafe.

    Steps leading into the sea

    These steps were a good setting for the sound of the sea close up

    Olympus LS14 XY

  • mesmerising resonant aircon sound

    mesmerising resonant aircon sound

    I wandered down what looked like a tranquil pedestrian lane away from the Hereford shopping crowds. Mansion House Walk in Hereford near the town centre.

    Looking towards the shops from Mansion house walk

    I heard this mesmerising nimbus roar from a commercial kitchen HVAC. That was the wide silvery tube in the header pic

    Not something you want to live next to! Fortunately there don’t seem to be any houses or flats nearby.

    XY recording, Olympus LS14

  • Fonnereau Way Soundscape

    The Fonnereau Way has been used since the mid-1800s, although it’s been the subject of a fight when a incoming resident at the Westerfield end tried to block it up and have it stopped on several occasions. Network Rail has also had it in for the pedestrian level crossing but have also failed to have it struck off.

    The path is slated to become a feature in the new Ipswich Garden Suburb development and the level crossing will be replaced with a bridge according to this document.

    The Fonnereau Way is the mainly vertical line to the left, with a bridge to put ‘elf’n’safety at Network Rail out of its misery

    Becoming a housing estate will clearly change this part of the Fonnereau Way, so I walked this to capture some pictures and soon to be historical sounds from the route. The farmland is intensively farmed and heavily sprayed as I’ve observed a few times, it’s quite possible that being turned into a housing estate may actually increase the biodiversity. Although the birds will be persecuted by hundreds of domestic cats and the gardens will no doubt be tiny, the farmland doesn’t support that many birds at the moment.

    The Fonnereau Way starts from Christchurch Park, but I started where the changes will be made, where it crosses Valley Road. In the local plan all vehicle access will be from Henley Road rather than Valley Road.

    P1000102_lzn
    the nondescript entrance to the Fonnereau Way from Valley Road

    and it’s a noisy place. It gets better quickly as the old path threads its way past some sports facilities and the playing fields

    P1000103_lzn

    before reaching farmland

    P1000105_lzn

    There are a few birds in the farmland, but to be honest the urban Brunswick Road Rec has more diversity to my ears, the birds are few and far between

    A chiffchaff makes itself known.

  • Installing cavity wall insulation

    A neighbour was having cavity wall insulation installed. This seemed to be polystyrene beads about 3mm diameter blown into a hole drilled from the outside. The machine makes a prodigious racket.

    A truck was parked on the road and a massive compressor started up. The noise increased when the beads were loaded up, from big plastic sacks. Job was done in a day and a bit.

    I still wonder what happens to that sort of thing in a fire. It’s better contained than the ghastly polystyrene tiles people used to insulate ceilings with decades ago. This continued until the fire brigade public service ads on TV about what happened in a fire. Polystyrene still produces nasty fumes, however.

    Probably recorded with an Olympus LS something XY

  • Echoes of South Kensington Station

    Echoes of South Kensington Station

    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

  • Robins at Alderman Canal

    Robins at Alderman Canal

    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.

  • Walking through evening nightclub crowd at Ipswich Buttermarket

    Wandering through this crowd waiting outside a nightclub to get in. I was on the way to the beer festival, nice expectant ambience