A peaceful and eerily intense sense of remote solitude here (you can surely almost cut it with a knife!), on what is reputedly southern England's remotest spot, on the top of Cut Hill, Dartmoor, Devon, UK, with fairly stiff breeze chasing around the peat hags. The odd meadow pipit can be heard, and a distant carrion crow.
This is a concatenation of two pairs of concurrent recordings I made on 6 May 2013, on the summit of Cut Hill, with the recorders at least part-sheltered from the breeze by suitable peat hags. The wind often produces a dry rustling sound, which is mostly from the dead purple moor grass from last season. At this stage the green new growth is hardly showing yet, so the landscape here is still mostly a very anaemic straw colour rather than green, though beginning to change.
Advisory
This is a quiet, immensely peaceful soundscape, with a very quiet opening, so the wise listener goes easy with the volume control!
On the broad south spur of Amicombe Hill, on my way to Cut Hill (broad rise in centre on skyline) for this recording session (i.e., on 6 May 2013). Very challenging terrain for hiking, but at least one is serenaded by skylarks at this time of year.
View during this recording session (the first concurrent pair) -- R2 recorder, with some rushes close-by, which give a distinct 'rushing' quality to the wind sound, while R1 was sheltered by one of the skyline peat scarps in the centre of this view. Positions for the second consecutive pair of recordings were some 10 to 20 metres to left of this view, again sheltered from the stiff breeze by respective peat hags.
Techie stuff:
The recorders were Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield, and they were each placed on a Hama mini tripod, which meant they were only a very few inches above the ground, but at least could be relatively sheltered by suitable peat hags.
Initial post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshield, and, much more recently, to apply 200% widening of stereo soundstage, using A1 Stereo Control, followed by an EQ tilt away from the treble (straight line from no change at 100Hz, to -7dB at 8kHz) to compensate for the treble boost resulting from the stereo widening.
Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thanks! 
This recording can be used free of charge, provided that it's not part of a materially profit-making project, and it is properly and clearly attributed. The attribution must give my name (Philip Goddard) and link to https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/667372/
Type
Flac (.flac)
Duration
100:06.569
File size
498.1 MB
Sample rate
44100.0 Hz
Bit depth
16 bit
Channels
Stereo
Comments
2 years, 7 months ago
Ohh philip than I am a child of 63
2 years, 7 months ago
Very nice recording: it's very long so you can fall asleep in headphones while listening. Quality is great.
I got 67 on the 6th of December. I love these kinds of Loops when someone records nature sounds. They make me chill
2 years, 7 months ago
Dunno about you, Mr Klankbeeld, but I'm 80 now… :-)
2 years, 7 months ago
Yes Philip, we'r getting old now ;-)
2 years, 7 months ago
Yes, it could certainly be chilly, but on that day, with quite strong sunshine, I was very comfortable in shorts and T-shirt (possibly added a long-sleeved shirt for the lingering), and had lost a lot of body water getting there from near Sourton just outside the NW edge of the Moor, and had already drunk the lion's share of my water by the time I arrived on Cut Hill.
Actually, there was a consequent funny thing about that session. During the second pair of recordings, after a little quiet prowling around I lay down in the partial shelter of the large summit peat hag area for a nap, and just enjoyed the sound of the wind and the birdies, just letting it all wash over me. Pure bliss! But then the 'fun' came when I decided to get up from that. Both my legs, both upper and lower, went into severe cramp the moment I started moving them for getting up!
Boy, was that scary! I tried all sorts of manoeuvres, and every time the cramp came on more. I was getting desperate to drink my last 1/3 litre of water, but to be able to that, unsurprisingly I had to get up first. All sorts of death scenarios were racing through my mind as I was wondering what the eff to do, having no mobile phone on me to do a 999. I could bellow really loud, so could probably get some distant mortal to hear my distress calls if I really had to take that line of action.
Anyway, after about 20 minutes of struggles I managed to haul myself, gasping like a stranded fish, up to a semi-upright position, leaning on the nearest peat hag edge, just by my rucksack, and managed to get the water bottle out and drink the remainder — so of course burning my boats, so everything was at least potentially still very much not okay at that stage!
Fortunately I'd already had some pretty terrifying episodes (always on my own), especially in the Scottish Highlands, where I'd got myself into a potentially fatal situation, where all it took was amusedly to acknowledge the worst-case scenarios without rejection and then switch attention from 'what if' to the actual nitty-gritty of 'what is'. I recount a real fun example on my page "Fear versus reality — a salutary mountain experience", https://www.clarity-of-being.org/fear-reality-experience.htm .
So, this time, while gradually recovering, still leaning against the peat hag edge, I looked around in the excellent visibility, and ran through my mind how much challenging leg-work would be required for each of the possible escape routes from this remote spot.
In fact in these very dry conditions (in a prolonged dry spell), the answer was (almost) a no-brainer, staring me in the face. Go south, over the whole tract of boggy terrain, via Devil's Tor and down the West Dart valley to Two Bridges. In those conditions the particular boggy terrain was just soft and springy, and my legs' cramp threats progressively diminished to nil before the end of that walk-out. Big sigh of relief!
