Evensong of the Wild

Join us tonight, in the golden glow of a late spring twilight at our favourite mooring spot under the Forest of Arden’s mysterious gaze. As twilight begins to fall settle back, relax and enjoy the majestic splendour of the ancient evensong of the wild; a symphony in which every voice has a part. 

Journal entry:

1st May, Friday, Beltane

“The dip and swell
 Of these gently folding fields
 Home to shadows and sheep
 And trees who have become
 Old friends.”

Episode Information:

This episode features sound recordings made on the South Stratford upon Avon canal on the afternoon and evening of the 25th April 2026. 

With special thanks to our lock-wheelersfor supporting this podcast.
Ana McKellar
Susan Baker
Mind Shambles
Clare Hollingsworth
Kevin B.
Fleur and David Mcloughlin
Lois Raphael
Tania Yorgey
Andrea Hansen
Chris Hinds
Chris and Alan on NB Land of Green Ginger
Captain Arlo
Rebecca Russell
Allison on the narrowboat Mukka
Derek and Pauline Watts
Anna V.
Orange Cookie
Mary Keane.
Tony Rutherford.
Arabella Holzapfel.
Rory with MJ and Kayla.
Narrowboat Precious Jet.
Linda Reynolds Burkins.
Richard Noble.
Carol Ferguson.
Tracie Thomas
Mark and Tricia Stowe
Madeleine Smith

General Details

The intro and the outro music is ‘Crying Cello’ by Oleksii_Kalyna (2024) licensed for free-use by Pixabay (189988).

Narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. 

Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.

All other audio recorded on site. 

Transcript

JOURNAL ENTRY

1st May, Friday, Beltane

“The dip and swell
 Of these gently folding fields
 Home to shadows and sheep
 And trees who have become
 Old friends.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

A steady rain falls, soft and drenching. The memory of petrichor lingers in the air. The canal dimples and swirls with raindrop rings. Large drops fall from the tips of the overhanging branches of oak and ash. They ring like glass bells as they hit the water. Tonight these watery bells will guide you home.

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the glistening wet darkness of a rainy May night to you, wherever you are.

You managed to make it! I’m so pleased you are here. I was hoping you’d come. Come in before you get wet through. The kettle is on the boil; the cabin is snug and dry and there is a seat waiting especially for you. Come inside, shake off your wet coat, I’ll hang it on the peg to dry, and welcome aboard. 

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS

The horse chestnuts are in flower; my most favourite sight of all! It took me by surprise. I normally keep my eye open for them, but in the busyness of this year, they completely slipped my mind. I think partly because there's not many around here. Then, a couple of days ago, we had some errands to run in Stratford town, and we were shoulder to shoulder in the jostle of crowds and I looked up, and there they were. Grandly magnificent beside the flowing Avon, creamy white candles picked out with a hint of pink and gold. 

Closer to home, the mornings and evenings are filled with the serenade of frog song, and the carp sun themselves in the sun-warmed shallows readying themselves for the spawning. We’re also beginning to see the dip and swirl of swallows scything the early skies of summer. And I keep meaning to say that the herons are back – although I would imagine duck and moorhen parents are not as happy about their reappearance as I have been. A few episodes back, I mentioned that a swan had suddenly appeared in the vicinity and was beginning to make friends with a number of boaters. We wondered if he would stay and make this his territory. Following the pair who had set up home here for about four years, swans have tested the waters here, but none have stayed. It looks like this one too has followed that pattern. One day, we realised that he was no longer with us and he had gone. Maybe in search of a mate.

An unbroken stretch of warm dry days with plenty of sunshine has created a sense of unhurried busyness to the moorings. Good weather means the growing list of outdoor jobs can be started and with it that easy sociability that characterises canal-life. It’s still early in the season and so the canal is still relatively quiet, but some boats have come to join us, for a short while at least, and others have moved on. Pairs and small groups of people stand alongside their boats, tea mug in hand. The lilt and drift of conversation pauses to hang in the air, where a couple of weeks ago wood smoke curled and rose. On days like these, jobs take longer. But that’s okay. No one is complaining. This is canal time.  

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]              

EVENSONG OF THE WILD

The sound of a warm late spring afternoon that stretches itself, long and lazy, along the towpath.

This is one of our most favourite places to tie up along this canal and we decided to take advantage of some glorious weather and jump off the world for a few days. To do nothing, but to just simply be. And here is always a perfect place to do that. It feels miles away from the spinning world with all its flex and fever. To be away from everything.

Although I should add, it’s by no means a secret spot, hidden away and unknown accept to a few. People regularly pass by this spot; shepherding or being shepherded by their dogs, couples stride past swinging walking poles and carrying backpacks heavy with water bottles and packed lunches. Others amble by, deep in the bubbles of their conversation, butterflies flitting around their earnest half sentences like lost punctuation. Sometimes a solitary walk comes by, phone clamped to their ear; their feet walking in one world, their heads in another. And then, of course, the swoosh and thrumble of cyclists; here one second, gone the next, leaving a wake of rustling rush and a memory of colour. I can’t blame them.

I used to love nothing more than cycling like the clappers on the invitingly flat, but bumpy, bone-jangling ribbon of the towpath. My most favourite bike (apart from my very first one), was an ancient ‘sit-up-and-beg’ gentleman’s bicycle that Mum and Dad found at a roadside auction in Norfolk. It rattled and clattered, the mud guards flapped like spaniel’s tongues and the cotter pins were worn and clanked alarmingly with each revolution of the pedals. It had a lamp clamped to a bracket which wept battery juice onto my knees, and there was a large saucer-sized chromium plated bell fixed to the handlebars. The mechanism had become so loose that every time I went over a bump it petulantly tinged. And it weighed an absolute ton, being made, I suspect, from old bridge girders and tractor parts, but it did have three gears – hard, harder, and hardest of all. It was totally impossible to get it above three miles a day and even little elderly ladies on small-wheeled shoppers would hare past me in a blurred flash of speed and the scent of mothballs and mint imperials. And yet, what style, what grace I felt, cycling, sitting bolt upright on my sprung mattress of a saddle. Three and a half foot above contradiction, I was able to peer over hedgerows and into front room windows with unabashed liberty. When I went downhill – nothing could stop me. And my greatest joy was to take it down the towpath. Its thin wheels were not really cut out for such demands, but it was fun. I’d wind it up, peddling furiously, leaning right over the handlebars, pressing my nose to the front mudguard. All ears, elbows and knees. Peddling like a pullet. My coat flailing behind me in the slipstream of my creating. I’d rattle and clatter, ping and ting, judder and jangle, in a cacophonous cloud of dust and exertion; the mudguards leaping and snarling. Oblivious to moorhen shriek or fisherman howl, crashing and bouncing over each dip and swerve; leaping off for each turnover bridges while the bike was still in clanking motion, to race up and over its humpbacked spine, and then, on the other side, John Wayning back onto the luxurious armchair of a saddle to resume the furious pumping of the pedals. I was devastated when that bicycle got stolen. Although, there are times when you have to concede that some petty criminals at least deserve a little credit for a certain display of taste and style.      

And so, yes, I can’t really complain about the cyclists when they tear past or blame them for their chasing that adrenalin-fuelled endorphin rush.

And yes, this spot is certainly not a secret place hidden away from everyone. While it’s not hidden, you might say that it is often overlooked. Its special charm left unrecognised. Although, many local boaters know exactly where I mean when I mention it, without needing to go into too many details.

And so, we’re here again, just for a few short days. The Erica luxuriating in the April sunshine, the snub nose of her bow nuzzling the new growth, alive with insects. It’s a calm, soporific type of afternoon. An afternoon when the tea slowly cools; undrunk, forgotten, because the way the light off the canal reflects on the under-leaves of the willow has caught your attention and now half an hour has already flown past.

On the other side of the canal, lies a large field. It is mostly thick with a crop that is the dark green of steamed spinach. Directly opposite us, is a crescent of unseeded scrub and dried earth. To the left of that a deep hedgerow – more an elongated copse than hedge – at certain times of the day, it bristles with song. Beyond the broad shoulders of the field is woodland. It’s the vestigial remnants of the old Forest of Arden. Shakespear’s forest. The forest of Rosalind and Orlando in As you Like It. It once spanned from the River Severn to the Trent. Arduenna Silva it was called in Roman times; ‘forest of fair heights.’

There is something about that thick brow of trees, that echoes with the strange calls of deer and muntjac, owl and pheasant, that brings the horizon almost to within arm’s length. Sit here with me for a day and watch, particularly at this time of the year. Watch as the sun salmon arcs over our heads from front left to rear right. Watch how the trees change colour; from the dark, almost black, greens of seaweed wrack though to forest and British racing greens and then, the sun drops behind us, the shift into olives and khaki and the brown of dried towpath mud.

Earlier, two hares emerged among the field crops, racing along the lines left by the wheels of tractor and trailer. They leap and tumble, stand on their hind legs and then one cavorts off into undergrowth. The other, remains. Hunched, at the edge of the wheel tracks, foraging. A small earthy round figure that slowly, slowly morphs into just one more large stone. This is how to become invisible in plain sight. From time to time, I keep my eye on this little shape. And then, it’s gone. Or, I think it has. Perhaps it went a long time ago and I’ve only been looking at a rock. Or maybe, it is still there, becoming just another rock in another part of the field. Perhaps Arden has retained a little bit of her magic, after all.

And as the clock ticks and the afternoon unwinds, the sun lies heavy and sweet on the canal. The sedge and reeds are growing tall. Some of last year’s mace still flag the bank, wind battered and winter worn. Their fleecy heads as shaggy and dirty as unshorn sheep.

Both sides of the towpath are rich with butterflies. Brimstone and tortoiseshell flick and weave. Orange tips smoulder and spark carrying embers in the wings. Commas and small blues dazzle and dance among the nettles and rising cow parsley shoots.  

The willows’ catkins are bursting. Even in the almost still air, soft warm snowstorms of fleecy seeds ride and float. Dandelion clocks, out of time, cast their spare minutes up to the sky. They mingle and slowly dance their way to earth. The water’s surface is cotton white with fluff. The slow current carries them past us. The mirrored surface of the canal is heavy with time.  

Further along, where the water’s side is clearer of reeds, the bankside is spangled with celandine yellow, and red campion fire. Delicate lady’s smock un-cups to the sun. Flecks of chickweed seafoam and stitchwort stars sail among the blue skies of speedwell and forget-me-nots.

Gnats and other insects circle and zig-zag low across the surface, chasing their reflections. You only have to wait, still, for just a very short while and slowly you will begin to see a world of activity. Look deep into this green cluster of young sedge, reed, and iris. Stay still. Do nothing. Just watch. There! An unseen world emerges, beetles, bright and as colourful as anodised metal, glint and spark as they scuttle along the path of each broad leaf. Winged insects, gather, strange and impossibly constructed, buzz and hum. Over there, deep among the nodes of this young iris, a large spider appears. Like the hare, it has really been there the whole time, it is just now that we are aware of it. Two legs feel the fleshy surface of the leaf blade. Perhaps it’s watching us. Perhaps its just sitting in the sun, drawing the wonderful heat into its body. A bit like us really. It’s nice, there’s space enough for us all and there’s warmth enough for us all.

Meanwhile, tiny spurts of wind, kick and play along the canal. It’s more a hint than anything serious. Patches of open water ruffled by ripples, dulling the bright mirror of its surface, yet making it dance with light.

The westering sun turns Arden to gold. An evensong of sheep call. Lambs nuzzle and scamper. Robin, chaffinch, wren, pheasant squark – bronze fire among the clumps of scrubby grass.

I keep an ear open for heron bark, but don’t hear any.

Shadows begin to wrap themselves around the Erica, but the air is still warm in the gathering quietude of evening.

This is the time of a dusk chorus. Vespers for wilder souls, more ancient than time. A signal of the ending of daylight and the closing in of dark. At this time of year, full-throated and glorious. A song to welcome in the night, and the world’s turning. Each voice, loud and soft, joining the symphony of twilight.  

It’s too light for stars, but I’m thinking about them anyway. The country lane that threads its way north-eastwards, parallel to the canal, is also beginning to quieten.

The water beside us is disturbed, every once in a while, by the ploink of a surfacing fish. A couple of times, a frantic flash of silvered water and a snaking vee of a small fish, skimming just under the surface. Perhaps fleeing a pike – even quiet under-waters hold their nightmares.

The three unpaired male mallard ducks, who have spent most of the afternoon dozing and idling their time away under the overhang of the opposite bank, suddenly explode into flight. They wheel around and land once more in the same spot they left. Two head for the opposite bank. One flusters onto the bank just down from us.

The sun dips below the horizon and Arden is clothed in widow’s black – or maybe it’s in something far richer and more mysterious than that. A muntjac calls and is answered.

There’s a constant commentary from the duck a few feet below us. Chuntering into the dark. To whom? Us? The two males, opposite? Perhaps it’s to himself?

Whatever the case, it is a lovely warm, companionable sound. Something soothing and reassuring.  

And then, a flick of shape darting head height across our line of vision. Then another, criss-crossing haphazard these shining waters the colour of mercury.

First the Noctules, larger, easy to mistake for a late returning sparrow or wren. And then, as the darkness gathers, out come the more common pipistrelle; agile, flighty, small. Often no more than a peripheral dart that dances just out of sight. Too fast to catch, too dark to be certain, but certainly something is out there. We stand in the duck hatch as they arrow just over our heads – skimming the cabin roof, narrowly avoiding entering the boat by veering away just in time.

This ancient evensong of the wild is drawing to a close, but even now, as the great swell of chorus subsides into starlight, there are still other parts for other voices. This is a symphony for all and long may that be the case.   

SIGNING OFF 

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG