Just before dawn a moon like a burning orange balloon appears, its reflection gilding our pilgrim path across the sands to Holy Island, Northumbria.
I cry out in delight and start describing this luminous beauty into my microphone we have been tasked with finding hope and wonder in the depths of the darkest year, and in this wild and sacred place, in a mingling of moonlight, land and sea, here they are.
BBC Radio 3’s Sound Walks are now a Christmas tradition. While engineer Andy Fell records the soundscape, I report the sights, smells and stories we encounter, performing a kind of live travel writing, my other job.
Nicola Benedetti OF course, it is perfectly possible that the prospect of Mrs Brown’s Boys on Christmas day is your idea of hell (it certainly is mine). And as for Gavin and Stacey on Christmas Eve, well, didn’t we watch that last year? The truth is Christmas TV is all well and good, but it’s radio that does all the heavy lifting when it comes to the festive season. It’s the background noise for the present opening and Christmas dinner cock-ups. It can also be relied on offering a menu of familiarity, variety and, yes, let’s just say it, intelligence over the next fortnight.