Radio Lento – where next in 2024?

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After four years of Radio Lento, here’s our latest tally of locations. To date, we’ve shared 216 episodes, totalling over 140 hours of beautiful quiet.

24 counties

Since our last count up, we’ve added four more counties. We’d hoped that it would be five but a recording we made in rural Warwickshire last summer wasn’t good enough to share and a walk in Staffordshire was too noisy to get the kit out.

If you are using the historic list of counties, there are 92. That’s 39 in England, 34 in Scotland, 13 in Wales and 6 in Northern Ireland.

We’ve recorded in 21 English counties (54% – pretty good). But only two in Wales and one in Scotland and none in Northern Ireland.

Here’s a map showing the county distribution. Each pin represents one or more episodes from the county.

map showing the spready of the 24 counties we have recorded in so far.

Some counties have more episodes than others. Here’s the full list in order of the number of episode from each. We’ve added links to episode playlists where we have made them:

94 locations

Episodes come from 94 different locations.

Some episodes are from 24 or 72-hour recordings so generate a few episodes as the sound changes at the place. Some locations feature more than once as we’ve gone back at a different time of the year or in different conditions to get a different atmosphere.

We generally travel to each location by train / bus / walking so this influences and inspires where we can get to.

map showing pins on all of our location spots across the UK

Worryingly, it’s getting even harder to find places which are road-noise or air traffic free. The world is getting noisier and quiet is harder to find. We can’t record in areas around big airports or where there are lots of big roads (unless there is something beautifully brutal about it) so this knocks off large areas of the country.

So, where next?

We’re hoping to get to Norfolk in the summer. But where else should we go? Do you know Somerset, Oxfordshire or Lincolnshire?

Do you know of a quiet place with good sound we could get to by public transport? We’re always keen to hear location suggestions. As a basic rule of thumb, locations must be:

  • away from a flight path
  • several miles from a busy road (even some B roads can be noisy if they are straight or a favourite of motorcyclists)
  • reachable by train / bus.

Do you know of a remote station where there is likely to be good sound without having to do a 10-mile trek? Or know a handy YHA in a quiet place which can be reached by public transport?

Where should we go next in 2024? Can we get to 100 locations or 30 counties by the end of the year?

About Lento

There’s over 140 hours of soundscapes for you to explore in our full library. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Podbean and other podcast providers. We also have episodes which are good to work to too, which are good for day listening.

Could you buy us a coffee on Ko-fi to keep us going? Or if you listen on Apple Pod, give us a rating? Or help to spread the word – share your favourite episode or this post with someone you think will like it.

Thank you for listening.

2 thoughts on “Radio Lento – where next in 2024?”

  1. I’m very fond of hearing a big city in the dead of night, that distant roar that never quite goes away completely with other sounds interspersed here and there. One of your earliest episodes was from your own garden (no. 4 I think). I’m listening to it now as a matter of fact. I find that so calming and restful.

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