The inspiring frisson of an all-night recording session alone in the wilds

My first all-night field recording session
— A real 'wow' experience and personal triumph

Background

Recording various dawn choruses had been one of my hopeful aims when I started recording, back in 2012, but until June 2014 such a goal had seemed pretty preposterous — a bit of self-torment with an unrealistic aim! — so I'd been largely keeping my attention off such an idea.

The point was that I had nobody to go with, and I'd had a morbid dread of being out alone in wild places in the dark, and I relied on hitch-hiking to get to and from said wild places (not having my own transport), and so would have to be out all night if I were going to do it at all, albeit with various short spells of sitting rest, and probably wouldn't be able to cope with that physically. Dammit, all those confounded reasons 'why not' — yet that still felt to be some sort of goal for me at some point!

But then, as the longest day (i.e., shortest night) of 2014 was looming, something within me got nudging at me to get more adventurous (and indeed rational) about the matter, so I stopped and examined each of my 'why nots' and considered whether it really was true, or whether it was just a bit of common or garden distorted — and defeatist! — perception of mine.

After all, I'd been through and indeed much more than survived a whole mass of 'dark' troubles that would have destroyed most people so afflicted* , and had pioneered a whole self-actualization methodology that had cleared me of a whole mass of emotional issues of my own plus other issues that were connected to me from other (unwholesome) sources, and, for one thing, by that stage I should have more or less completely cleared whatever had been making me feel scared to be out alone at night.

Also, I'd survived standing and shivering all night at Launceston (Pennygillam) junction on a return hitch-hike in July 2007 in remarkably good spirits, when I was already knackered because I'd just hiked the very strenuous 18½ miles from Polzeath to Tintagel, while in the late stages of healing a major attack of osteoarthritis in my right knee* (which was indeed hurting a bit by the end!). It was clear that, despite some real physical weaknesses, I had more stamina than I was giving myself credit for.

Thinking about those various considerations, I realized that my not driving and so not being able simply to set out very early in the morning to record dawn choruses wasn't such a constraint upon me. It really was a workable proposition, at least in theory, to hitch-hike out, say, late afternoon, carrying kit to keep warm and feed / water myself overnight, plus of course one or more recorders, with a tripod and a furry windshield for each, and of course, most importantly, high-visibility gear and suitable lighting (head-torch and also LED camping lamp for use at my impromptu base) for the dark hours.

One potential great advantage of doing things that way would be an altogether order-of-magnitude greater and more abundant experience, including much potential to get recordings additional to any specifically aimed for. Evening soundscapes, obviously, but sometimes maybe something interesting in the middle of the night…

Hence my rather tremulously deciding to try an all-nighter at the Teign Gorge as a very worthy trial run.

My 'D Night' — D for daring and rejoicing, not disaster!

Preludes

In the event, come 18th June 2014, for me that first all-night recording session was a true mega-experience, full of rapidly evolving emotions and initial inner conflicts with all sorts of doubts and nervousness. — Had I bitten off more than I could chew? Was I going to survive at all? (Clearly this chump didn't, and it's just a residual bogeyman writing this drivel!) — But I just noted all those worry thoughts with a certain gentle amusement and concentrated on the wonderful surroundings and their sounds, and of course paid close attention to what needed doing, as I'd done during that unscheduled all-night hitch-hike.

I set out fairly late afternoon, and got an unusually prompt and direct single lift to my destination, Dogmarsh Bridge on the Whiddon Down to Moretonhampstead road, arriving there just past 6.0 p.m., which meant I had the whole evening to 'kill' as well as the night up to pre-dawn, when I'd start recording. All that waiting could be mind-numbingly tedious!

— But it worked better than that all along the line, even though it certainly required some inner adjustment, peacefully biding my time while not engaged in any task.

By the time I'd walked for some 10 minutes along the track by the River Teign and was nearing the beginning of the so-called Teign Gorge (not a gorge but a deep, steep-sided valley), I was noticing some delightful birdsong, prominently featuring blackbirds and jackdaws, so I stopped to make a recording there, on the edge of a hillside pasture with lovely copses harbouring a multitude of birds, with the gently babbling River Teign behind the recorder.

After some 45 minutes I moved on, but just a little further down, beside the same pasture, I just had to make another, similar-length recording, in which jackdaws and rooks were prominent, with the really lovely contented munchings of a herd of grazing cattle coming closer and closer to the recorder towards the end. What a lovely welcome for my intended mega-session!

Final working-out of some sort of plan…

Slowly, gently, I plodded up through the woods to the Hunter's Path, which runs along the top of the north side of the valley, and ambled along that to a prominent precipitous crag called Sharp Tor, which has a seat conveniently placed in the edge of the hillside copse there, for a little pondering time as to how to deploy myself and my resources (two Sony PCM-M10 recorders). One of those recorders could well go here at Sharp Tor, where the sound of the River Teign was much stronger than further along where I thought I might put the other one (higher up above the river). Anyway, people could still be coming along there while it was still reasonably light, so I wasn't going to leave anything there then.

With ideas crystallizing, I picked everything up and gently traipsed along to Hunting Gate, the highest point on the Hunter's Path, thinking about the recording potential of various spots along the way. Actually my primary intent at that time was to find a suitable spot quite high up above Fingle Bridge, in the valley-slope woods, again with the quiet rushing of the river down below.

However, as I got nearer to Fingle Bridge I could hear that confounded hum from the Fingle Bridge Inn's generator. I'd been told that it was kept running 24/7 following some flooding problem a year or so before, and I couldn't have that hum in any of my recordings. So I retraced to around Hunting Gate, wondering about recording potentialities of spots in that vicinity.

In order to have clarity of the distant panorama, the recorder had to be outside the line of copse running down the slope here at Hunting Gate (the foliage blocks a lot of fine detail in the sound), so I found a stunted young tree in the clearing just to the east of that copse and tried attaching a recorder to one of its branches with a GorillaPod. That was still pretty near that line of copse, so should pick up a fair amount of closer birdsong from there as well as the distant panorama. I removed it then and retreated to Sharp Tor, now with a clear plan. I'd wait there, mostly sitting on that seat, just having a little pack-free walkabout once in a while to loosen up and enjoy the new experience all the more.

The waiting here seemed interminable, with the sun so slowly going down. At least it was a wonderful peaceful experience just observing the different impressions I was getting as the light gradually faded, and dusk became dusker and eventually 'dark'. — Yet, because of the time of year the darkness was really not fully dark, with a faint light remaining in the sky. Although from this position the sky did eventually look notionally blackish in relation to the stars, I could still clearly see the still blacker silhouette outline of the other side of the valley and indeed high Dartmoor out to the west.

Rather discouragingly, after the lovely birdsong for the two early evening recordings by that field, there wasn't all that much to be heard from here, though at least one or two blackbirds did sing on and off till about 10.30 p.m. There was nothing I'd really call a chorus, so my ideas of possibly recording an evening chorus up here as well as a dawn one were not to be fulfilled. And of course that left me with some doubt as to whether I was really going to get all that much of a dawn chorus at my two chosen spots. Curiously almost no birds sang in any of the trees really close-by, even when the real dawn chorus did eventually arise. I've still no idea why that was.

— And now, ready for action…

Anyway, I'd made my choices, and now it was a long, long wait. My idea was to wait here at Sharp Tor till about 2.30 a.m., then start a recorder here, perched in a position on this crag, carefully chosen to get optimal balance between the river sound and distant birdsong, and at once then to pick up everything else, traipse again to Hunting Gate, and use the seat just a little down the other side as my primary base then.

At about 1.30 a.m. an owl started hooting down below, so I started the already carefully placed recorder there, and decided to move on to my second base, just beyond Hunting Gate, and set up the second recorder as I'd already rehearsed. To my surprise, about 2.30 I already heard an occasional very faint twitter (maybe a skylark starting to 'warm up'?), so set the recorder going in order to be sure of capturing every bit of the lead-in and full beginning of any dawn chorus that deigned to grace me there.

Mother Nature was evidently in teasing mode, for those occasional twitters petered out, and I was left wondering how much there would be for me to capture. Then, something like 3.30, for one thing I was startled by the closeness of one of those disturbances that male pheasants make — I'm not sure whether that's supposed to be a display or alarm call, but did it make me jump (with a gasp and a giggle)! And then, soon afterwards, 'Oh hell!' I thought, for there started up a loud-seeming sound that had to be some sort of farm machinery somewhere a bit upstream, down in the valley. It must have been very loud indeed to sound so strong up here. Was it going to continue and wreck my dawn chorus recording?

Anyway, it was time for me to have a longer walkabout (best part of a kilometre in either direction) to check the other recorder, so I started off, pack-free as nobody was coming along here to interfere with anything. As I started off to west of Hunting Gate, I noticed something odd. That tiresome sound now seemed much quieter and directly below down the slope. No, this couldn't be machinery at all. Surely it must be — That was it! — It had to be a nightjar churring! That was the first time I'd heard one in the wild. Wow! Joyful shivers up spine!

The Sharp Tor recorder was doing fine, though I didn't hear any more owl calls there, and so I returned to my Hunting Gate seat base. I thought to check this recorder, particularly as they both had a small mechanical flaw that could cause the recorder to unexpectedly stop recording and need to be restarted. To my disgust this one had done just that, so I'd probably not got that close nightjar.

Anyway, I was thankful to have restarted the recorder still before any hint of coherent dawn chorus had started. There were the odd more distant nightjar episodes, and eventually, at about 4.0, far down below me in the valley, a single song thrush started singing, almost immediately followed by a few others, till soon the whole valley seemed alive with them, also with robins and soon yellowhammers joining in. Blackbirds came to my notice just a little later, and about 20 minutes after the first song thrush sound the valley was full of blackbird sound, most of it very distant, but truly a joyful wonder to behold.

This was really living up to what I'd been aiming for, and it seemed crazily beyond belief, that this was all working out. I periodically checked the recorder for its little red light, which I could spot at a tolerable distance in the dark (and indeed my head-torch beam) without causing disturbance to the recording, and thankfully there was no further technical glitch.

A 5.30 packed breakfast (my normal rather Spartan but at least sustaining packed lunch), and then it was time to take off my extra layers of clothing because I'd be walking energetically, and pack up the recorders and return to Dogmarsh Bridge for an early hitch-hike back to Exeter, feeling quite over-the-moon chuffed, with waves of shivers and tingling up the spine as mental reruns kept popping up, and I knew what a really major personal breakthrough and success this outing had been.

Postlude

That 7.0 a.m. return hitch-hike worked without significant waits, so I was back in my flat a little before 8.0, then for a mandatory full two hours in bed to get a little sleep before officially facing the new day in a joyfully knackered state, eager to process and audition the new recordings prior to the purgatory of the detailed editing, when all sorts of wonderful things would have to be cut out because of passing aeroplanes and other disturbances.

Had I captured that very close nightjar? — No, it turned out. Nor that particularly startling pheasant disturbance. That recorder had run for just the first 56' of the c. 1h 40' that had elapsed between my switching it on and my having discovered that it had stopped. However, it had captured some more distant nightjar sound before the song thrush 'kick-off', and of course the whole main dawn chorus. In fact the Sharp Tor recorder had done better in that regard, and captured an ensemble of pretty quiet nightjars, which continued, on and off, well into the early stages of the main dawn chorus.

All four recordings came out brilliantly, to add to my 'chuffedness' (or did I mean 'cussedness'?). Okay, the stereo imaging of the PCM-M10 recorders was frankly crap, but it wasn't till years later that I recognised that it was so, and eventually was able to process the recordings with the A1 Stereo Control VST plugin, and transform the sound into something altogether more life-like and 'present'.

The 2014 session's recordings on Freesound

• Evening birdsong by River Teign near Teign Gorge — Blackbirds & Jackdaws

• Evening birdsong by River Teign near Teign Gorge — Jackdaws, Rooks & grazing cattle

• Sharp Tor dawn chorus

• Hunting Gate dawn chorus

How this came about in the first place — a funny serendipity

On Monday 4 June 2018 I hitched out to the Teign Gorge, aiming to be ready for any thunderstorms to record, following a promising weather forecast for a bunch of them in that area from the middle part of the day and through the afternoon. On my way out along the Hunter's Path again, seeking to identify a choice of suitable spots for recording such a storm, and eventually picking what seemed to be the best for this purpose, I noticed a very persistent cuckoo calling down below, in or near the valley bottom.

That was the first time I'd heard a cuckoo in or around the Teign Gorge, despite the cuckoo being quite common in various 'fringe' parts of high Dartmoor. Naturally I then wanted to record a soundscape there with that cuckoo in it — but my priority had to be first to get my storm recording spot finalized.

I finally made my choice about midday, and decided to set up the recorder there right away, so it would capture something of the cuckoo along with other birds before any storm entered the scene. Indeed, the cuckoo was still merrily cuckooing while I set up the recorder. — And then, typical of Mother Nature's playfulness, once the recorder was running, the cuckoo was cuckooing no more! — Oh, and of course the thunderstorms did happen, but about 20 miles further south, so I returned home with no worthwhile recording, putting a brave face on it while grimly muttering something like At least it's an adventure.

Hey-ho, I returned to the Hunter's Path on the Wednesday, without any promise of thunderstorms, intending to try another birds recording from a more suitable spot by the Hunter's path, hopefully capturing the cuckoo. In the event the cuckoo must have flown away in disgust and gone to where other cuckoos hang out, and I returned home again with no really satisfactory birds recording.

— Except. There was one thing I did take back with me from that outing that was worth much more than any recording of that cuckoo I could have made there. On my outward hitch-hike, the woman who picked me up for my short final lift from Whiddon Down to Dogmarsh Bridge turned out to be quite ornithologically oriented. When I told her about that cuckoo I was hoping to capture in a recording that day, she strongly recommended I try Bellever Tor, near Postbridge, out on high Dartmoor. She said there were plenty of cuckoos there, and if I ever wanted to record nightjar choruses, there were lots of those out there too. She also emphasized that it's very quiet out there, far from any roads, so would be ideal for my purposes.

Wow — an option not to be sniffed at! — Why not let's make that an all-night session, then, so I have best chance for the nightjar choruses as well as any cuckoos!

Take 1 (2018) — Scratch performance

The adventure

So it came about that on the morning of Friday 8 June I hitch-hiked out to Postbridge quite heavily laden for an all-night session — the two Sony PCM-D100 recorders and their tripods being significantly heavier than my original little M10 recorders, and of course extra clothing and other supplies for such an outing. Because hitching to there would be less reliable than to some other places, I decided to choose morning rather than afternoon so that I could then spend the afternoon doing an extensive recce, so that, come evening, I could immediately place the two recorders at what should be really good spots.

Having booked my evening meal at the very welcoming East Dart Hotel, I walked up through Bellever Forest and up through an extensive clearing in the forestry (nearly all Sitka spruce), which leads up to Bellever Tor, a profuse abundance of granite crags on the top area of the hill. Along the way along this broad clearing I noted many spots that would probably work well.

I thought it could be a great idea to have the recorders in positions fairly centrally placed between the two sides of the clearing, so each could pick up an all-round panorama of the nightjars, which I expected to stay fairly close to the forestry edge.

With that in mind, I decided I'd have one recorder ideally on top of the highest of the Bellever Tor outcrops — except that there was a stiff easterly breeze, so I couldn't do that unless the wind eased sufficiently during the evening. The other recorder I'd like to have about midway between the two sides of the clearing nearly a kilometre to the north, where an old drystone wall, with gaps, runs obliquely across the clearing.

Again, however, at least this afternoon, it was too windy there, but I was hearing the odd cuckoos and so wanted to do a little recording then. I managed that by putting a recorder in the shelter of some forestry regrowth on the east side of the clearing. At least that was capturing a cuckoo or two, whatever the main session might or might not bring.

…Back there after a very sustaining evening meal at the hotel, I found the wind still pretty stiff and not suitable for putting the recorder in the middle of that clearing, on or close to the aforementioned drystone wall. So I had to place it again in the shelter from the regrowing forestry edge, and then started that one, then traipsing up to the tor to see what I could do there. Clearly I couldn't record on top, so found a tolerably sheltered spot a bit down on the west side of the tor, and started it, facing roughly west to the forestry that side, the nearest part of said forestry actually being a clear-felled area, with a full-height dense stand of the spruces immediately beyond.

When I returned to the lower recorder, to the north, I found that the wind there had dropped, so I moved it out to the middle of the clearing, where I'd originally intended.

As it became dusk, so, very quietly and tentatively at first, the nightjars started up. I was starting to have some doubts about this, because this all seemed just so quiet, and I wondered how much of that would be picked up at a usable level in the recording. The odd cuckoos sounded too, till almost as late as the nightjars did (i.e., till past dusk).

Meanwhile, the recorder on the tor was also getting nightjars and the odd cuckoos, but it was difficult for me to work out what the recorder was actually hearing. In any case, the wind hadn't dropped up here, so there was no question of moving the recorder to a higher and more exposed vantage point.

…In order to move on in a timely fashion I now have to cut, cut and cut, to what I found in the recordings during the following days of intensive auditioning / editing work on them.

The booty — first the wows…

I was thrilled at what I'd captured, both evening and dawn choruses of nightjars (and other, distant, birds) and some cuckoos having come out apparently really well, though the tor recordings, both evening and dawn, suffered quite a bit from microphone wind noise at times despite the three nested furry windshields on each recorder.

Special plus points were particularly from the tor recordings, for the recorder placement had given a slightly less distant perspective on the performance. Particularly noteworthy were:

• The cuckoo that occasionally perched quite nearby and produced echoes / reverberations from the forestry edge;

• Sometimes two to about five cuckoos sounding concurrently. They were usually sounding at different pitches, as well as sounding different musical intervals, ranging from a major second (whole tone) to a perfect fourth (even a fluke fifth picked out on one occasion). This could lead to interesting and beautiful musical effects, especially when one or more of them were echoing / reverberating in the forestry. Indeed, I think sometimes one was calling from just inside the forestry, and so was particularly reverberant. Quite hauntingly beautiful!

• A hilarious sporadic furious ding-dong spanning about a half-hour, between a small group of carrion crows in and just outside of that dense stand of forestry. When inside that stand, they were quite reverberant.

— And then the woes!

Some little while after having produced CDs of evening and dawn choruses from this session, I listened again to one of these recordings and noticed something I simply hadn't been listening for, so besotted I'd been with the wonderful experience of that whole session.

Simply-put, those recordings, apart from the afternoon one, all had noticeable background hiss! Yes, I had noticed it in a way, but just assumed it was the breeze in the forestry. Indeed, it was more than just hiss, because there was also a very low-level background sound in midrange frequencies, which again I'd taken to be wind in the forestry, even though I hadn't noticed that at all while out there. Ouch!

Indeed, I demonstrated clearly that it was self-noise from some component of the recorder, by doing a 'blank' recording at home, with the recorder shut away in a reasonably sound-insulated box, shut away in my little store room, which has no windows, and I got just the same background noise, which wasn't audible in that store room or indeed anywhere in my abode. This seemed perverse, because the D100 was widely praised for its exceptionally low-noise performance. What was going on, then?

With some experimentation I worked out what the problem was.

• First, it's a huge 'ask' of any recording equipment that isn't very high-grade (and eye-wateringly expensive) professional gear, to expect to have an inaudible level of mic / pre-amp noise when recording such quiet soundscapes as I was trying to.

• Second, I was getting poor performance from the D100 recorders because of my using three nested furry windshields on each. I'd had to do that because this model's mics were so insanely wind-sensitive. I found that the D100 has a distinct rise of its noise floor in the high frequencies, and the corrective EQ curve I had to apply to all the recordings was precisely the same shape and frequency band as the high frequency rise of the noise floor. So I'd been nicely boosting the noise floor specifically where it was already highest in the frequency range. What a confounded bloody mess!

I withdrew the CDs and indeed eventually relegated those recordings to the category of 'discarded but kept just for historical interest' — and glumly assumed that it just wouldn't be worth retrying the venture as I couldn't afford more expensive equipment. I stopped using the third furry windshield for further recordings, having found that some very quiet soundscapes I'd made using two 'furries' didn't have really noticeable hiss. The trouble was, though, that that meant further limiting what I could usefully record.

But then, as the ensuing winter was opening out into the beginnings of spring, I was feeling driven by a certain outraged indignation at my being stumped on that matter. Surely, with some bits of 'lateral thinking' I should be able to get at least something pretty good from Bellever Tor, or at least its environs, if I simply adjusted my aims for any sort of 'perfect' recording from there. Let's try some practical experiments and find out what I can get away with, already knowing some things I can't get away with, at least to my satisfaction!

At least, despite all the apparent failures of that session, the much less 'grabbing' but incredibly peaceful and beautiful (when you really tune into it) afternoon recording was okay and worth keeping.

Take 2 (2019) — Prospecting, rehearsal and dress rehearsal

Prospecting…

A decidedly unfriendly stiff and chilly north-east wind 'greeted' me as I returned to the forest clearing extending roughly southwards to Bellever Tor on 31 March 2019. My task was primarily prospecting, with a secondary task of possibly making the odd test recordings at certain promising-looking spots to check on my assessment of the recording balance I'd be likely to get there.

I did a few short test recordings on relatively sheltered spots a bit below the top on the west side of the tor, with a D100 and my old M10 side-by-side, comparing performance with two furries (D100) and one furry (M10). Following that, I nosed around close to the forestry perimeter, seeking to identify suitable spots to the west, and round to north, of the tor.

— But, dammit, it was so windy. Probably I'd not get sufficiently light wind to be able to record usefully with only two furries on a D100!

And — poor little me! — I was getting a bit cold in this wind, just pottering around and not striding energetically as I'm used to out in the wilds. I decided to find shelter for a relatively early lunch stop, and then have a good warming-up with a stiff fairly circuitous walk finishing up at Two Bridges.

So, just looking around me for lunch-stop shelter, I supposed I'd have to go into the forestry — but first, what about these clumps of self-seeded Sitka spruce trees just outside the forestry perimeter?

I went into the lee of one such clump, and was really surprised at how sheltered it was there, considering the small size of that clump (three trees no more than some 9 or 10 metres high). Yes, I could be quite comfortable there. — But wait a moment. That's a beautiful sound, of the wind gusts through the various clumps of these trees, and, a bit more distantly, the main stand of forestry. Let's see what shelter that neighbouring little solitary spruce tree might give for a recording, just sufficiently apart from me not to be disturbed by my own noises while having my lunch.

To my absolute amazement, that little tree was affording much better shelter than even those impressive granite outcrops up on the tor. The reason appeared to be that the needles of those trees, unlike those of broadleaved trees, act like combs and smooth out much of the turbulence in the air current, so that the air flows straight past, with minimal tendency for eddies to form and drive gusts into the notionally sheltered space. — Okay, then, let's put only one furry on this (D100) recorder — a really severe test — and see how much mic wind noise this picks up!

Cut to back at home the following day as I examined that outing's recordings…

The planned test recordings were sort-of interesting but now were declared redundant by that unscheduled lunch-stop recording. — Amazing, brilliant! For the first time ever I'd recorded with a D100 with only one furry, in quite windy conditions, and yet had got only a few brief incursions of non-critical mic wind noise! And it was a really nice recording in its own right, as a little bonus! Listen to it on Freesound.

Then at last I was sure I had the primary key to getting a really great all-night session there, provided weather and other factors obliged.

A second prospecting visit

On Wednesday 10 April I returned for further prospecting, having got some ideas for really effective recorder placements from Google's satellite imagery of that area, duly zoomed-in. Again a stiff and biting north-east wind was blowing, and although I did start one test recording, it all felt to be rather a waste of time because, unfortunately, forestry work (i.e., continuing a clear-felling programme) had started, on the edge of the very stand of tall Sitka spruce trees that I was wanting for cuckoo echoes and reverberation effects. Would any of that stand of trees still be there, such time as I could have an all-night session there? Also, the noise from that work meant I couldn't sensibly make any further test recordings, at least until the workers' lunch break.

In the event I found the wind so cruelly chilling (and I have Raynaud's disease), that I chose to find a really sheltered spot behind one of the outcrops of Laughter Tor to the south to have a lunch break, and then had a brisk warm-up walk to Dunna Bridge on the Dartmeet road, and down to Two Bridges for my return hitch-hike. Once home I deleted the test recording without examination because I knew it would be blighted with forestry work noise.

That outing still hadn't been a waste of time though, because during my pottering around my brain had still been working hard on considering many possible placements, including ones further north, to get relevant soundscapes from the regrowing clear-felled and dense-stand areas around there — just the ticket for nightjars. Also, this visit had gained me a further instalment of familiarization with the layout of that area and the best access routes between different candidate placement spots across rough terrain that could be difficult and disorienting in the dark.

Rehearsal

The next step was on Easter Saturday, 20 April 2019. I hitch-hiked out to Postbridge after a full lunch, for an evening rather than afternoon session.

My intention for the day was further prospecting for the intended future night session(s), and making a series of side-by-side 'rehearsal' M10 and D100 recordings in the evening from likely spots for the intended night session(s) there, so that I get a better idea of how effective I could be in minimizing the mic self-noise issue. In the event the wind dropped so much that no obvious wind-in-trees sound was audible at all in the evening, but at least I'd be able to hear the recorders' self-noise and see if it was better than last year, and which recorder gave less self-noise.

So, after some toing and froing I settled on likely good spots close to particular outlying spruce trees close to the forestry perimeter — mid- to lower reaches of the whole western flank of the Bellever Tor hill being peppered with them —, and then took some rest, even with a lie-down for a while. I heard a cuckoo or two briefly, and there were lots of willow warblers everywhere around the forestry (last time here I'd heard none).

Then, as it was coming up to 7.0, I started recording with both M10 and D100 recorders side by side, first at the southernmost of the three lower points close to the west-side forestry perimeter, then notionally sheltered by the little clump of spruce by the minor track that leads up to the tor, and then notionally sheltered by the final (NE-wards) outlying solitary spruce, with the bird sounds more distant. Each recording was 15–25 min rather than the originally intended 10 min, because the birdsong soundscapes, indeed with some cuckoos, were really nice, and if I had at least 10 minutes from each spot after editing, I could string those shorties together to make a useful compilation recording.

I finished off with a recording on the spot where I'd done the dawn chorus recording on the tor last year — but with all the Easter weekend traffic on the roads clearly audible, it wasn't likely to be usable for anything. I also did a very brief pair of recordings on the E side of the tor, as it was quieter there, so I could hear the self-noise to best advantage.

As part of the adventure, the return hitch-hike from Postbridge, starting in late dusk, was a protracted and worrisome epic, with hardly any traffic on the B3212, and became potentially somewhat life-threatening, but I guess I did get picked up in time, seeing that I seem to be here now writing this!

Subsequent examination of the recordings showed clearly that the widened M10 recordings, although sounding nice, weren't a full match for the D100 equivalents, and had placed peripherally- or rear- positioned sounds in crazily wrong positions in the soundstage, so really I needed to sideline the M10 as much as possible.

The three recordings (D100 version) made from widely separate spots near the forestry perimeter were truly beautiful and atmospheric, and indeed really did work well strung together in chronological sequence as a single composite recording.

Dress rehearsal

The adventure…

Tuesday 14th May was really a bit early for my purposes for getting a good showing of both cuckoos and nightjars, for although the cuckoos would be well under way, the nightjars couldn't be expected to give much of a showing till at least the end of the month. However, the weather forecast strongly invited, apart from a quite cold night, and I might not get another opportunity within the brief time slot for both birds to be giving a good performance. So, I went for it. If I got a later, better opportunity, then at least this attempt could be seen as a worthy dress rehearsal, and could still get a lot of good cuckoo sound in any bird chorus.

This time I set out heavily loaded, with four recorders and tripods — three D100 and my original M10. Also, one of those aluminium 'space blanket' things, specially purchased to help during lie-downs during the cold night.

I arrived at Postbridge mid-afternoon, and booked an evening meal at the East Dart Hotel again, then took some naps in the sun quite nearby.

After that evening meal, off I lumbered, creaking and groaning a bit, with my augmented load. I quote below from my journal (with a few edits); R1 was the M10 recorder, and R4 was the damaged D100:

As to why I abandoned the session, although I was doubtful about the recordings containing enough birdsong, the primary and compelling reason was that I'd been depending on being able to use the new 'space blanket' over myself when having lie-downs at a suitably sheltered spot high up on the tor. What I hadn't bargained for when I was starting to feel the cold and needing the extra protection for my lie-downs, was that even the very gentle breaths of (cold) breeze up there were enough to make that light aluminium film totally unmanageable, flapping about uncontrollably, and I was rapidly getting it more and more crumpled up in my efforts to get it placed over me and tucked in.

In desperation I then scrunched up the useless 'blanket' and stuffed in in my pack. — Then, for my own safety — indeed actual survival! —, I had to 'get the hell out' for as rapid an abandonment as I could safely manage in the now rapidly gathering dusk. I'm not a cryophile!

There followed another 'epic' return hitch-hike from Postbridge, but at least it worked out better than the previous time, with the main long wait being at Whiddon Down junction on the A30 rather than really out in the sticks. Still, it was a 2.48 a.m. return to my flat!

An encouraging assessment…

The ensuing day I started marvelling at what a wonderful set of soundscapes I'd actually captured. The recorders had picked up much more birdsong, including cuckoos, than I'd really noticed from my high-up base, and I heard no obvious self-noise, except in the M10 recording.

I'd used two furries on each recorder, which ensured a lower hiss level than last year for the D100s but a higher hiss level than usual for the M10 because I'd always used it before with only one furry. But in any case, being closer to the birds' 'action' and various hints of breeze in the trees at times meant that I didn't have to raise the recording level so much afterwards — again resulting in a lower self-noise level than last time in the edited and adjusted recordings.

The recorders had all picked up some non-critical wind disturbance, but I was able to tame that with TDR Nova GE, a very versatile dynamic EQ VST plugin.

I'd been correct in my expectations about the nightjars. While the recorders had picked up some nice cuckoo work, including some echoes and reverbs in the forestry, there were only a very few, very quiet, nightjar incursions. A suitable day about two weeks later ought to catch it just right.

Yes, indeed, this had turned out to be a really productive and worthwhile dress rehearsal for some future session that seriously might hit the jackpot.

Listen to the R4 recording at Freesound. That was the most northerly of the four. I removed from it some 20 minutes of a too-close and thus uncomfortably loud very persistent blackbird, but that recording still has a lot of blackbird, despite my hearing almost no blackbird at all from my evening base up on the tor.

Take 3. The real performance — just maybe…?

The adventure…

On Friday 31 May 2019 I set out much as for the 'dress rehearsal' session. One concerning factor, which could mean a pretty useless session, was that the forecast wind direction this time was south-westerly, albeit pretty light. That would mean I'd have to choose different positions from those I'd chosen previously, with the recorders pointing in different directions from previously, and, rather worryingly, that would emphasize the notionally distant traffic noise from the Two Bridges to Dartmeet road down to the south.

At least I was better prepared this time, with no 'space blanket' (ever again!), but an expensive pair of very lightweight insulated windproof overtrousers (Montane Prism) that should match the effectiveness of my regular top garment for such occasions (a Montane Prism jacket), and I had an even better-insulated jacket as well in reserve in the bottom of the pack. I'd also got similarly posh and highly insulating Montane Prism gloves and mitts, specially purchased for this event, to help ensure that I wasn't defeated, and could have an easier time on any future night sessions. Those would be too warm for general walking, but for a potentially cold night session they could be just the ticket, and indeed were to make this session much more manageable.

Let's quote from my journal (with small edits and added photo):

Got away from the Hotel at 6.27 p.m.

Because of the different and rather adverse wind direction I had to use at least somewhat different and most likely not-so-good recorder placements as compared with 14 May, which all felt rather discouraging. They were as follows:

• R4: In regrowing forestry edge, just NW of the low drystone wall (c.750 metres N. of the tor, facing NW.
• R1: In regrowing forestry edge, due N. of the tor, facing NNE.
• R5: Sheltered by self-seeded Sitka spruce trees a little outside forestry periphery, NW of tor, facing NNE.
• R6: Sheltered by self-seeded Sitka spruce trees a little outside forestry periphery, W of tor, facing NNE.

It took about ¾ hour to get all the recorders placed and running — the last (R4) about 7.50 p.m. It took a long time to find a spot for R4, particularly as I was initially thinking of putting it somewhere on the E. flank of the tor, hopefully to minimize the traffic noise — but few birds were singing on that side, and I felt a rather dreary and lifeless 'energy' there, and it seemed that the traffic noise was coming across just the same anyway — so I reverted to the W. side, but further north, so it would capture altogether a different bunch of cuckoo / nightjar sounds and forestry echoes / reverbs.

This time, with the superior sheltering afforded by the spruce trees, I took a chance for the purpose of minimizing mic hiss — I used only one (Windcut) furry on each recorder.

The midges were getting a nuisance when I was setting up R4, though I got away without putting on the midge net at that point.

Although there was a good amount of birdsong, including cuckoos, the evening part of the session was seriously mucked up by disturbances — primarily from traffic on the Dartmeet road, the SW breeze causing all traffic on that road to be coming across louder than in previous sessions here. To make things worse, for quite some time initially there was, first, a whole string of motorbikes coming along that road.

And then, immediately following that, there came a spectacular and really stress-making disturbance caused by two or three antisocial brats in some sort of very highly revved racing cars, apparently racing each other, coming on the road from Moretonhampstead towards Princetown and then turning off onto the Dartmeet road and becoming insanely loud for me up here on the tor even though they were still over a mile away, producing spectacular echoes in the forestry. You can hear that disturbance on Freesound.

And then, as the traffic noise was becoming more intermittent, I was noticing a lot of distant people disturbances from late visitors to the tor. Disturbances were less by nightjar chorus time, but I heard only a few bits of churring, mostly in the vicinity of the low drystone wall, so altogether it seemed not to be my lucky session!

Because of wind direction I had to find a different spot on the tor for my base — initially just a little down on the E. side. However, the spot I found didn't feel particularly 'right' and was rather difficult to find, involving some negotiation of outcrops, and was getting midges enough for me to use the midge net. — So I was relieved to find a better spot, which was beside the (almost) top of the little track running NNW down from the tor, and whose panorama was to N. and W., so I could be more in touch with what was going on where the recorders were.

Also I didn't get midges there till towards breakfast time — and then, rather than have the midge net half-on while eating breakfast, I had my breakfast standing and moving about a bit, which was sufficient as it was only a modest assault from the midges.

I let all recorders run all night, though when I did a pre-midnight check of all recorders I found that R1 was showing low battery level. In order not to stress my system unduly, I didn't return to base on the tor at once and come back with fresh batteries.

Rather, I chose to leave it running like that, and then I'd change the batteries when I came round for a notionally 2.30 pre-dawn-chorus check. If it ran out in the meantime, that would hardly matter. My only reason for not having a middle-of-night 'off' period was that I wanted to minimize the walking around that I had to do there — and also of course, as noted last year, both nightjars and cuckoos appear not to have that much of an 'off' period at all.

It was actually 2.50 when I changed R1's batteries — having decided not to exert myself further by checking the other recorders, as they'd all been given fresh batteries for this session. In fact R1 was still running, albeit with the battery indicator now flashing. Even then, as I came up to R1 I heard a distant cuckoo, so it was just as well that I hadn't made some arbitrary choice of a start time for a separate dawn recording session.

During that and the previous excursion down to the recorders I'd been a bit perturbed at mist development, which was making it difficult seeing where I was going (in the dark), with the head-torch illuminating mist rather than what I wanted to see. This gave me difficulty in returning to base, though, thanks to all my familiarization sessions, I still managed with only the odd minor and brief loss of my way. I took encouragement from the mist being pretty shallow, at least on the tor, with some stars still visible.

Fortunately, as dawn light grew beyond just a hint, it became clear that the mist was first retreating into clearly-defined areas and then those were gradually thinning and dissolving, giving some magical visual effects, though it was still too dark then for me to get decent photos of it.

In the pre-dawn / dawn period there was very little disturbance from traffic. Yes, it was still over-loud, but there was very little indeed on the road at that time. And the horrendous succession of high-altitude aeroplanes didn't start till something like 5.0 a.m., so that I'd got a remarkably 'clean' pre-dawn and core dawn chorus, and so could regard what little I'd be able to salvage from the later part of the recordings as a welcome bonus.

As for the birds' dawn performance in the general direction of the recorders — from my base on the tor (meaning it was all distant), it was tremendous, magical! I'm sure I've never before heard so many cuckoos — either in total or at a time. It really was amazing, and I was thrilled. The nightjars did give a proper chorus down there on the W. side, and right from the start there were cuckoos, often reverberating or echoing in the forestry just as I'd been wanting.

Quite often cuckoos were singing different intervals or/and at different pitches at the same time, and often with dramatic / comical 'hiccupping' phrases. Particularly during the early part of the performance, cuckoos were almost constantly audible somewhere — and during the later part any silences of theirs were pretty short-lived.

It was sad to think, though, that none of the recordings would have captured the magnificent distant soundscape that I heard from the tor. On the other hand, each would have captured a whole lot that I was not — or was only very slightly — hearing from this vantage point.

That latter point was underlined, of course, when I went round eventually to take each recorder down; I was hearing excellent birdsong at each spot. In the case of the first one to take down (R6), I arrived a little before my 7.30 a.m. start-time for taking-down, and during the short wait I heard a rather distant cuckoo producing the most magnificent moving echoes (L. to R.) in the forestry.

Once the aeroplanes got properly started (I think c. 5.0 a.m.), there were only brief gaps in the seemingly mostly continuous quiet aeroplane noise. However, although many great cuckoo episodes then were trashed by the disturbance, some did come within gaps in that disturbance, so that that final phase wouldn't at all be a complete write-off.

It must have been about 8.30 a.m. by the time I'd got the last recorder packed away, taken off and packed away my insulating layers, my legs now sighing with relief at being bare again, and having final drink and pee before the weary but joyful half-hour stiff plod back to Postbridge, via a stony forestry track for speed.

The 1h 10m wait for a lift close to the East Dart Hotel was an entertaining, albeit somewhat worrisome, ordeal, as I kept nearly falling over, my body crying out to be allowed to sleep. I got back to my abode at 11.10 a.m. that Saturday.

A 'wow' assessment

In the event, my choosing to use just one furry per recorder had paid off well, with little wind disturbance, and even the few fairly prominent gusts were rendered innocuous by my 'wind-cut std' preset in TDR Nova GE. However, it proved a real pain and stress editing the R1 evening / early night recording (I'm regarding evening / night and dawn / morning as separate recordings), and I decided most likely to write-off the rest of the evening recordings. The traffic disturbance was a real devil, and much more difficult and frustrating to edit out than aeroplanes.

R1 captured a late dusk visitation by a few deer or Dartmoor ponies in the dark. No vocals, but plenty of sounds from their stumbling around on the very tussocky / hummocky terrain there, and quiet hints of their grazing there, and indeed one very tiny fart. They came pretty close to the recorder, and it was a wonder the latter didn't get knocked over and even trampled upon!

Both the R1 and R4 positions, which had felt to be quite unpromising despite my having sought to get the best possible placements consistent with good wind shelter, gave excellent birdsong soundscapes, with no shortage of cuckoo episodes, some echoing or reverberating. Clearly I really had thought-out the placements really effectively. I chose the R4 recording to represent here the evening recordings.

I eventually did bite the bullet and edit the remaining three of the evening recordings, and although it was a gruelling task, I got at least a CD's worth of excellent final version from each — which may fail to get used only because of their being overshadowed by the dawn ones from the same spots. Indeed, I'd rate all eight of this session's recordings each at a full five stars — so making the whole session a 40-star one!

A minor disappointment this time round was not to have any entertaining furious ding-dong between carrion crows in the forestry edge, nor to have any repeat of the couple of brief episodes of a roe deer stag aggressively barking and grunting during and again after dusk, which occurred in the 2018 session here — a rather alarming sound as I didn't know at the time what was doing that.

I've included on Freesound an additional evening item that I had to cut out of all the evening recordings apart from that of R4, which latter I hadn't yet set up at that time. That item is:
Disturbance (racing cars) during evening birds recording on Dartmoor, taken from the R6 evening recording. You can now hear that hilariously hideous disturbance on Freesound, with a pretty full description.

Summary of the Bellever Tor sessions' recordings, with Freesound links

I'm very unlikely to put all these on Freesound, but anyway this is a handy summary of the recordings. You can read more detail about the individual recordings in Chronological List of Recordings, Part 2.

For each of these recordings that I do upload to Freesound, I'll give the relevant link in this list. The recorder placements are listed in order from north to south.

(Further uploads to follow…)

• The 'scratch performance' session (2018) — i.e., what I retained from it
  • Afternoon, on east edge of regrowing forestry
• First prospecting outing (2019)
  • Wind and few birds, from shelter of solitary Sitka spruce during lunch stop
• First 'rehearsal' session (2019)
  • Three consecutive short evening recordings strung together, close to forestry boundary to west of Bellever Tor
• 'Dress rehearsal' evening / dusk session (2019): (in order from north to south)
  • R4 at the most northerly position, by the bottom of the rather faint track running NNW from the tor
  • R5 a little further SW, at a spot with a very promising-looking panorama to S, with the tor at L. and forestry to R.
  • R6 the furthest SE, facing NW, with forestry to L. and the tor to R.
  • R1 in shelter of a single isolated small Sitka spruce a little way up the slope from R6, facing more or less W, overlooking the self-seeded trees lower down, and facing the forestry.
• The final performance session (2019): (in order from north to south)
  • R4: In regrowing forestry edge, just NW of the low drystone wall where it enters the forestry, facing NW
    • Evening / dusk
    • Pre-dawn to early morning
  • R1: In regrowing forestry edge, due N. of the tor, facing NNE
    • Evening / dusk
    • Pre-dawn to early morning
  • R5: Sheltered by self-seeded Sitka spruce trees a little outside forestry periphery, NW of tor, facing NNE
    • Evening / dusk
    • Pre-dawn to early morning
  • R6: Sheltered by self-seeded Sitka spruce trees a little outside forestry periphery, W. of tor, facing NNE
    • Evening / dusk
      • Disturbance (racing cars) during evening birds recording on Dartmoor (a hilariously hideous disturbance I had to cut out of the evening recordings from R1 and R5 as well)
    • Pre-dawn to early morning

      • (used in Nature-Symphony 30 (Mother Nature telling springtime melancholy not to be so silly!))

Quest for my scary holy grail — a thunderstorm from high up in the Teign Gorge

I'd recorded the odd thunderstorms from my bedroom window in central Exeter with remarkable success (albeit largely limited to the small hours for acceptable quality), but what I really wanted to experience, and capture in a high-grade recording, was a thunderstorm, complete with a reasonable number of ground strikes not far away, from either somewhere suitable along the Hunter's Path, high up on the north side of the Teign Gorge, or possibly from an equivalent position high up on the south side (flank of Cranbrook Down). I particularly wanted to capture the echoes and reverberations from ground strikes below me in that steep-sided valley, with spectacular ricocheting of echoes to and fro between the opposing slopes.

A first stab — wearing myself out finding reasons 'why not'!

On Friday 26 May 2017 a potential opportunity for such a storm recording presented itself. I nervously hitch-hiked out to arrive about 3.0 p.m that day, prepared for an all-night session, naturally somewhat apprehensive about what I might be letting myself in for. Here follows an adapted quote from my log…

About-turn — starting to work out reasons 'why', instead!

On 26 May 2018 — exactly a year after that frustrating first stab at the venture —, I tried for the Paul's Seat beautiful viewpoint spot on a bend quite well up on the steep and very stony main Cranbrook Down track on the wooded south side of the Teign Gorge at Fingle bridge. The main storm threat in the forecast was for the evening, but heavy showers, possibly thundery, were expected from late morning. I arrived suitably early, to be set up before any 'weather' arrived, and thought this spot could indeed be what I'd been after. True I'd be next to some pretty tall trees, but they were in a general spread of woodland on the slope, with a fair number of mature trees, so that the lightning-strike risk there should be acceptably low.

However, as I awaited something interesting, I started noticing the real contra-indications for that spot. With all the loose scrunchy stones, any attempts of mine to pace about to loosen my legs and relieve my weak back would produce a lot of noises I'd want to edit out of any recording. Also, the track was very steep, apart from a slight bay in that bend, and in a thunderstorm deluge it would become a torrent. Not only would I get very wet feet, but it would be dangerous then to walk up or especially down, because of the risk of slipping on the then very mobile loose stones and hurting myself badly. Also, the wind was already becoming quite stiff from the east — too much for a worthwhile recording at that spot anyway.

So, I beat an ignominious retreat and hitch-hiked from Drewsteignton back to Exeter, meeting the first of the heavy showers as the car neared Exeter towards midday. There was indeed an evening thunderstorm (I salvaged only 15' of its back end, thanks to all the city-centre noise), and I consoled myself, that I'd made a sensible pragmatic decision to abandon the outing. Here's that salvaged bit on Freesound.

There followed two daytime outings for the same purpose from a particular point beside the Hunter's Path, a little west of Hunting Gate. There was a chunky oak trunk rather in the way of getting the clearest of soundscape for any lightning echoes, but it ought to do reasonably well. Although this was a slightly separate oak, it was very spreading and not very tall, not outstanding in relation to the other close-by trees. Also, I was getting to spy around there for signs of any trees having lightning damage. There were the odd isolated birch trees that looked as though they'd taken strikes, but I saw no tell-tale vertical to rather twisty strips of bark having exploded off any of the more substantial tree trunks in the open copses. It looked as though the chances of a strike on any one of those trees even in a severe storm had been very low indeed, so my fears were clearly not based on the observable evidence.

On the first of those two outings (4 June 2018), no storm or even plain shower developed within sight, but on 12 July (thundery showers forecast), about middle of day, a nearly stationary shower developed, which became torrential, though with no thunder. That worked out quite well to a point at least as a recording of a torrential shower — though the sound of the large drops and splashes coming off the oak tree's leaves made an over-loud din on the umbrella. Here's the recording on Freesound, lasting well over an hour. The version of that recording at Freesound is minus some 12' of the most torrential phase, to respect the listener's poor old ears, as that sound gets a bit fatiguing when listened to at the correct volume. In my journal entry for that outing I added a little 'post mortem' note:

The nearest I got to that holy grail…

On Tuesday 23 July 2019 the weather forecast was 'interesting'.

It was a very warm and humid day, so I needed to keep walking to a reasonable minimum. I hitch-hiked to Dogmarsh Bridge on the Whiddon Down to Moretonhampstead road, then gently walked along the low-level track on the south side of the River Teign through the Teign Gorge (not really a gorge at all) to Fingle Bridge, one of the busiest honeypot spots in the Dartmoor National Park.

Here's the adapted quote from my journal:

The Met Office online weather forecast was indicating widespread showers (presumably thunderstorms) during the evening from about 5.0 p.m. and up to about 1.0 a.m., so I was prepared for a challenging and possibly all-night session. I set out as early as I did, both to minimize heat stress on outward hitch-hike and walk to Fingle Bridge, and also to allow me plenty of time to experiment with a cheap tarp I'd bought from Amazon.

As I got to Fingle Bridge about 11.20, I hung on there for lunch at the Fingle Bridge Inn. As well as my lunch, I asked for two of their baguettes to take away.

I gently made my way up the steep Cranbrook Down track to the beginning of the Lower Deer-Stalker's Path, which is quite high up, and started preparing for making a recording just a little down that track, at a position where some Scots pine trees were closely above me on the continuing up-gradient on the south side of the track. Those trees should reduce any risk of lightning strikes just there, thanks to corona discharge from the trees' needles when there's a very strong electrical field.

That tarp was an effing nuisance. It added significantly to my pack weight, and then not only couldn't I find any workable way to string it up to be a useful rain shelter for the recorder, but its material proved to be so crackly-noisy that it clearly couldn't be used at all for that purpose, for every little wind disturbance would be making its noises (a combination of crackly paper and metal foil sound), so I abandoned that experiment and packed the tarp away. That meant of course that I was then committed to using the umbrella again as rain-shelter, with all the noise that that creates when the rain gets heavy.

I set up the recorder and left it running at 5.0 p.m. to ensure that I wouldn't be caught napping and miss anything.

The afternoon / evening wait seemed interminable, with only very minor castellanus developments. I was frequently fending off or splatting biting flies — mainly mosquito, but also biting midge and the odd Simulium ('blackfly').

Then, at 10.15 p.m. a fleeting light sprinkling of rather large raindrops prompted me to put on layers and have umbrella at the ready, for possible long spell of sheltering me and recorder in pouring rain.

At last, with it more dark than dusk, I saw a flickery lightning flash to SW — the direction from which the visible clouds were moving.

I should explain that my view of the whole south side was blocked off by the slope I was on, rising quite a long way up. So all I could see of any lightning on that side was the flashes and flickering through the trees at a very steep angle high up in the sky. I had no smartphone then with lightning tracker software, as I have nowadays, so I couldn't tell much about what was going on there.

Within half a minute frequent lightning was dancing about right around the southern half from almost full-west to full east, so it seemed that the storm was guaranteed to come right over. I heard a few more or less distant rumbles. However, two catches.

First, after great quietude during my long wait, with only a very occasional high-altitude aeroplane, just as the storm announced itself, so also did a persistent incessant stream of high-altitude aeroplanes, sometimes two simultaneously (often coming opposite directions). And then in any case that storm defied the wind direction I'd observed, and kept to the south, passing by rapidly from west to east, with very frequent lightning soon concentrated to the east. Presumably it would have caught Exeter.

All of the storm system that came over here, then, was a more purposeful more or less light shower, so I was holding the umbrella to shelter me and recorder, and of course getting all the rain noise on the umbrella. But because of the way things had turned out, once the rain had stopped I abandoned the session, and with clear intent to delete the day's recording without processing or examination, as it would not contain sufficient interest for me to want to use for anything.

Then, by the time I was moving off for Fingle Bridge (stripped off down to shorts / T-shirt again) there were already lightning flashes to the west, albeit not unusually frequent this time — presumably directly approaching me — but it no longer made sense to set up again for a recording, so I kept going. Although I was now just in shorts and T-shirt, it was still sticky work, even though I was keeping my speed to a pretty slow gentle plod.

It was a fantastic experience, with each flash displaying unexpected and seemingly weird silhouettes and shadows around me — something I'd never experienced before. That plod seemed to go on for ever, but the approaching flashes were definitely getting closer and coming this way. It wouldn't have been worthwhile recording down here in the valley bottom, because the sound of the River Teign was too loud for a worthwhile thunderstorm recording.

That storm did come over properly — the first time I've ever been out in the wilds alone in the dark in a thunderstorm!  It was, however, a very ordinary storm, with thunder generally not continuous, and with no sound of ground strikes at all in the valley. The rain came on as I was hurriedly approaching Fisherman's Bridge, at the west end of the 'Gorge', which I had to cross, and became torrential for a short while during a sheltering pause among the trees (with an added ten minutes for lightning to recede as I was about to cross a field), and then I set out on the final leg to the road.

When I did venture along there, it was a tricky matter, for now in many places the track was under water, and the grass of course was very wet. Somehow I got through all that with only mildly damp feet — though they got a bit more soggy at the final kissing gate, which housed a puddle I hadn't seen!  At least the umbrella had done its job well, for apart from the damp feet I remained respectably dry.

The walk on the Whiddon Down road still had little bits of light rain at times, as well as all the drippings from trees.

Actually I came to regret not having hung on with the recorder for the second storm, because around midnight the aeroplanes reduced to only an occasional one. Something to remember for another time.

However, that wasn't quite the end of the adventure. I got to the road at 1.04 a.m., feeling very fatigued, with aching legs, and knew there was no point in waiting there for a lift at that time at night. So I had to brace myself for walking the whole way to Whiddon Down, where I'd stand a better chance of getting a lift.

In the event I'd been walking about 40 minutes before a car came up from behind and actually stopped for me. That return lift was weird, and I felt less safe during that ride than I did out in the thunderstorm!  It was the only vehicle to come during my walk towards Whiddon Down, and it was a group of two youngish Romanian men in the front with a 'black' South-African in the back, and it was clear that as well as having the effects of alcohol, they'd been taking some other drug as well. The Romanians were very over-the-top in a boisterously ebullient manner, with over-fast and unsafe-feeling driving.

They were just going to Whiddon Down — except that when they asked me where I was trying to get to (because of intermittent light rain I wasn't using my sign), the driver said that in that case they'd take me on to Exeter, and were insistent about that!  They took a little time at Whiddon Down Services both for fuel and for some shopping — and the South African guy even bought a 750ml bottle of spring water for me, insisting that I take it, because they thought I looked as though I needed it. That was after their having offered to get food items for me, and something to drink.

Then, instead of travelling on the A30, the driver took us back the way I'd come, and beyond to Moretonhampstead to drop-off his friends, and then — Ooo-er! — on the narrow and very winding B3212 from there, throwing the car around at every blind bend.

That was truly a white-knuckle ride, and it seemed a wonder that I got back to Exeter unscathed or indeed at all! I was back in my flat at 2.48 a.m. on the Wednesday.

That day I learnt that the first storm had indeed given Exeter a great lightning display, which of course I'd missed. But at least I'd had the multiple joys of a real bit of adventure, and, for the first time in my life, had been enjoying the experience of being alone out in the wilds at night, with a thunderstorm coming over.