Hello!

I hope this is the right forum to post in, mods forgive me if not.

I'm a sound designer looking to record ambiences & other sounds in a cave environment in the coming months/next year. I've been doing my best to find options from Google but I'm mostly being led to locations that seem as if they're frequented by tourists; for recording purposes I would obviously prefer to be in a spot that's mostly undisturbed by a bunch of noisy humans. Can anyone here recommend any locations that are more remote/visited less by people, but still decent sized spaces? Anywhere in the UK.

As a caveat (pun intended?) before I post, I have absolutely zero caving experience and am very much a noob when it comes to this topic, and considering that I'll have recording equipment with me, an ideal location would be something I can walk into with relative ease..

If you've read all this, thanks for your patience, any help at all would be hugely appreciated.

How varied do these sounds need to be? Just echoey underground space, or water dripping, the sound of a cave stream? Any specific requirements?

What part of the country are you in? If you've no caving experience then you probably want some help, and I'm sure you'll get some volunteers in your area if you let us know where that area is. 

There are infrequently visited caves all over the country, and many contain areas that are easy enough to get into!

Probably not the point but

BBC Sound Effects library - Caves & Caving

Yordas? Large cave chamber in the Yorkshire Dales which can be walked into with a light... (just be aware it will flood in times of heavy rain)

Wow, thanks so much for all the speedy responses firstly! Much appreciated. Wasn't sure if I'd get laughed off the board 

David Rose said:

How varied do these sounds need to be? Just echoey underground space, or water dripping, the sound of a cave stream? Any specific requirements?

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So my plan is twofold - 1) to record the natural ambiences of the space (so anything goes except humans, haha), and 2) to playback previously recorded music/sound and re-record it within the space. The only requirements would be a fairly sizeable space, and I suppose anything sonically interesting that naturally occurs is a bonus.

aricooperdavis said:

What part of the country are you in? If you've no caving experience then you probably want some help, and I'm sure you'll get some volunteers in your area if you let us know where that area is. 

There are infrequently visited caves all over the country, and many contain areas that are easy enough to get into!

Click to expand...

I'm based in the South (Hampshire/Surrey), but willing to travel anywhere from Cornwall to I guess Yorkshire.

Ian Ball said:

Probably not the point but

BBC Sound Effects library - Caves & Caving

Click to expand...

A great library (in general) but yes, different from the purpose I'm looking for. Thanks anyway though!

JoW said:

Yordas? Large cave chamber in the Yorkshire Dales which can be walked into with a light... (just be aware it will flood in times of heavy rain)

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That sounds fun.. I'll do some more googling. Cheers!

When you say flood.. do you mean unexpected, flash flood, or use your common sense and if it's raining hard go another day flood? I suppose those are nearly the same thing.

common sense for yordas. the main chamber has risen by about a metre in an hour and a half (personal experience). but that was in August's very wet conditions.

We'd placed some science in there, ran away when the water was lower, then come back to a bit of a lake.

if you'd just walked in, you would notice the water rising, and think of doing something about it (by walking back out )

PM sent, with a suggestion.

On the wrong day Yordas flow can increase alarmingly fast. Basic rule is, if it's not raining and not forecast to rain, you should be OK in there. Even if the water's already high but falling, the worst case scenario is that you can't do what you want to. But it can be a big stream, so demands respect (especially of you aren't a caver and don't really understand the ins and outs of how caves respond to weather changes).

Can you put some dimensions on "sizeable space"? Yordas is huge. If you could cope with smaller, then there'd be more choice.

Cave sounds change depending on the size of the area you're in. You'll get a different sound in a narrow passage compared with a large open cavern.

The trouble with a walk-in passage to an open space is that anyone will be tempted to walk in and you've a high chance of disturbance, especially if it's also easily accessible.

Browgill Cave in upper Ribblesdale has a fast running stream, is an easy walk-in and is safe in all but extreme conditions. You should get good results near the entrance. The cave now receives few visitors as the farmer does not allow cars to be parked on his land. Park at Selside and cross the Ribble via a footbridge, a very pleasant walk of about 1.5 miles.

Take a look at https://cncc.org.uk/caving/ for details of the cave locations mentioned in this thread in the Yorkshire Dales and surroundings.

If you are in Surrey you could contact WCMS for access to the local mines there, you won't get much in the way of running water but if you pick the right spot you'll get plenty of drips 

Bucket_ said:

I'm based in the South (Hampshire/Surrey), but willing to travel anywhere from Cornwall to I guess Yorkshire.

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The Mendips is probably your most easily accessible sizeable caving region, followed by Devon or South Wales.

You're better off accompanied by a more experienced caver I think, and shouldn't struggle for volunteers. I will volunteer if you want to go for Devon, I can think of 1 or 2 suitable spots.

It's also worth considering that you can reduce the likelihood of bumping into people by planning your visit wisely. Go very early in the morning on a weekday outside of school holidays and you'd be very unlikely to meet anyone! How long do you need uninterrupted?

If you fancy trying Derbyshire you could go for Giants Hole at Castleton.  This has a lively stream going into a walk-in entrance with several chambers along the stream-way (and a waterfall coming into one of them) before you reach Garlands Pot, where the whole stream goes over the top of the pot and down the pitch.  It's a very popular cave for beginners so you might need to pick your time if you need to have no humans around but it has plenty of variety in the relatively short entrance series and you can tackle it quite well in a pair of wellies and a helmet.

You need to pay a trespass fee for parking and then it's a hundred yards or so to walk and you're in.  Details on the Derbyshire Caving Association website: www.thedca.org.uk: look under the "caves" section and then under "Castleton" area. 

PM me if you'd like some help with this and we can probably find someone to give a hand.

Or you could just arrange with a show cave like Gough's Cave or Wookey Hole to visit after hours.  The latter are quite amenable to such requests.  There are plenty of drips at the moment - and I don't mean the Thursday night diggers.

The problem with a lot of these suggestions is these places are often visited by those pesky humans you mentioned. I am racking my brains to think of somewhere that is both infrequently visited but is also easy to get into. grahams suggestion may be the best, but its a long way for you to travel of course.

Without wishing to blow our own trumpet too loudly, me and Domee did recently release a mini-album of compositions created with natural cave sounds, which you might be interested in:

https://double-w.bandcamp.com/releases

Most of this work was recorded in various parts of Peak Cavern, Winnats Head Cave and Old Tor mine, with a few samples from other sites, but one track was actually recorded exclusively in the upper Giants streamway, in extreme close-up with a directional mic. As is always the case, we recorded a lot more material than we used, and in many cases had to go back to re-record sounds again as we didn't consider them good enough quality the first time. Background noise in some spaces was often much louder in software than we heard it on location, particularly on quiet tracks where the emphasising the 'empty space' was paramount - the 'Search for the Perfect Drip' track probably took six trips in various sites to get enough to work with - hence the name. I think some of this was 'digital hum', simply by having to crank the mic gain up on very tiny sounds, and we didn't have any supplementary equipment to help with that - just getting the mics and recorders in and out safely was enough to worry about. But also I suspect much of it was endless reverberation of tiny sounds from the cave walls which we just can't hear - but the mic can if it's set to 11!

Streams were actually really difficult to get good recordings of, because of the tendency toward white noise without some variation - we did one traverse of Lake Passage on a very wet day in different spots, and it sounded great at the time, but it did tend to all sound quite similar after a while when played back later, and it was difficult to discern much variety in the space as the reverb is so encompassing.

It's spun off all sorts of ideas about how sound works underground though, and the sheer variety of tonal colours possible even when moving only short distances, if the cave shape or volume varies a lot - it's really interesting. And as a large space to work in, the Upper Gallery between Mucky Ducks and Treasury Passage takes some beating - the reverb is wonderful, and we were getting fifteen seconds of sustained sound on quiet (dry) days. 'Geological Indigestion' is our tribute to the thousands of broken limestone slabs you have to walk over to get to the inner reaches, all of which sound fabulous.

On a different tangent, this might be useful.....

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/architecture-and-sound-an-acoustic-analysis-of-megalithic-monuments-in-prehistoric-britain/F37AF50641B26AC288BA756A1C12EA33

Theres eglwys faen up on the llangatock escarpment..