Slow Radio: Thames

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Thames

BBC Radio 3 - Slow Radio, Thames

A journey along the Thames from Tower Bridge to the North Sea by field recordist Ian Rawes

Field recordist Ian Rawes journeys along the Thames from Tower Bridge to the North Sea, capturing the diverse sounds of natural and human activities along the river's shores.

Field recordist Ian Rawes embarks on a journey in sound along the Thames from Tower Bridge to the North Sea. 

It begins inside the north bascule chamber of Tower Bridge, a brick-lined void where we hear the descent and raising of a huge counterweight. 

Next we hear the wash of passing boats at an old coal jetty in Greenwich, then the clattering of flagpoles in the wind at the mouth of the Royal Albert Dock. Since the recording was made, the flagpoles have been removed during the Dock's redevelopment into a marina surrounded by new housing. Further east, there are the bangs and pops of a clay pigeon range on the Dartford Marshes heard from across the river. They're among the last audible survivors of the river's gunpowder age of wildfowling and cannon batteries. 

The river matures into an estuary at the start of Sea Reach by Canvey Island, where repeated blasts of an oil refinery's siren make a vast and mournful noise. Pigeons coo and scuffle in a derelict building on the Kent shore as a prelude to the abundant sounds of wild fowl and insects on the Allhallows Marshes on a bright summer's afternoon. 

Waves lap quietly at the shore before night falls, then a marsh frogs' chorus joins the deep hum of container ships passing to and from the deepwater docks at Tilbury. Along the estuary the sounds of nature are always intermingled with those of industry and transport, perhaps prophetic of the future of the natural world in general. 

The journey ends at low tide on the Maplin Sands in Essex, a quiet wasteland of puddles and worm casts stretching to the horizon. 
Producer: Ian Rawes
Executive Producer: Iain Chambers
An Open Audio production for BBC Radio 3

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