This Listening Landscape episode comes from the South Dorset Ridgeway, recorded around mid-winter 2024. Winter is a time of withdrawal in the natural world, leaving the bare bones of earth and stone, skeletal trees and ancient monuments. This is also the time of year when we revel in telling stories of past times and other worlds, and mysterious characters that haunt the winter landscape…

When it hailstones on the Hell Stone

The Dorset Ooser awakes

To stamp his feet and champ his teeth

Till all of Dorset quakes…

We listen to the reverberations of the wind wrestling with barbed wire and tree branches, to the evocative cawing of crows, and the sound of rain rhythmically drumming upon old stone shelters. Even the frozen ground beneath our feet hums with deep, low notes, stirring emotions and imaginations.

Created by Ezra Gray & Martin Maudsley

Commissioned by Dorset National Landscape & Common Ground

Artwork by Dan Bendle