Last September I made a recording of six of St Paul’s Cathedral bells quietly chiming for the 11.30am Eucharist service. It’s a startlingly different sound to the usually exuberant Sunday ringing of twelve bells; and a direct sonic consequence of the coronavirus restrictions. I thought it would be interesting to enter the recording for the […]
What a year so far! Lockdown, of course, put a stop to our walks. It also completely changed Central London. Things that we would usually marvel at – the noise and pace of the West End, the bizarre theatre of hearings in the Royal Courts of Justice, bells ringing out across the City – ceased. And core […]
Bern Cathedral bell ringing on a Saturday Listen on radio aporee Recording by Felix Blume, 24.02.19 Dotmaker Tours has now gone global! Well, perhaps not global, but I did just have a thrilling long weekend in Switzerland with postgrad students at the University of Bern. I was there to lead a soundwalk and give a classroom presentation […]
It was a real treat to launch our new tour Trinity Buoy Wharf and Secrets of the Docks with this lovely group of families last Saturday. It’s a walk that explores the twists and turns of the Thames round North Greenwich peninsula, and the ebbs and flows of water, people and industry. The group photo was […]
I had a fascinating afternoon yesterday taking a group of Russian journalists on A Rubbish Trip. It was part of a course run by Thomson Reuters Foundation on waste and recycling. And finally a chance to share one of my favourite London rubbish stories. It concerns this Dust Heap at Battle Bridge (now the area […]
Our last walk of the year, The London Ear, will take place on Remembrance Sunday. It’s a poignant time to think about peace, silence and noise. London experienced a noisy kind of peace on Armistice Day 1918. The social reformer Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary: ‘Peace! London today is a pandemonium of noise and revelry, […]
If you ever get the chance to visit a waste transfer station, go! I went this morning to my local facility at Southwark on a tour arranged for Open House. I left feeling that I had both satisfied my inner geek – I’ve been talking about MRFs on A Rubbish Trip for years, but never visited […]
We were thrilled to receive this poem from Wendell P Smith who came on A Genius Tour last week. The walk was led by Cathy Haynes specially for a group of visiting American science and arts undergraduate students. This walking tour of the creative process follows in the footsteps of those who’ve had great ideas […]
The Open House programme for 2019 has just been released and there are some cracking places to visit. If you don’t already know, Open House is the one weekend each year when hundreds of buildings in London open their doors to the public for free. It’s a chance to nose around beautifully architected homes, sneak […]
I was thrilled that our listening walk The London Ear was the theme of last week’s Soundscapes show on BBC Radio Ulster. If you don’t know the show it’s well worth checking out. It’s an eclectic mix of great music that you probably never heard before, along with a weekly featured soundscape. This week that was […]
