On that vid that Steephill posted, at the very end when they highlight the main 'corridors', we're on the edge of the western north-south 'leg'. We're overflown frequently - every 5 minutes or so - by planes that are high up. We can hear them, although I think it's emphasised by having no other background noise - there is no road traffic noise here at all. The planes wouldn't wake you up here. The chinook helicopters would but they usually stick to respectable hours. They make the whole house shake when they come over low. Then we get local training flights from the small airfield, lots of helicopter over-flights generally - Western Power check the power lines by flying low along the overhead cable routes, the air ambulance, the air sea rescue flights. I think because there are very few people living here and we're outside the National Park, it's seen as a safe place to practice. I've stood at the top of the hill behind our house and watched a hercules flying down the valley below me, over the house.
We hear the occasional tractor labouring up the hill a couple of miles away - mostly during muck-spreading season. And when one or other local farmer is haying, there'll be tractor machine noise all day for a couple of days. I think I heard a police/ambulance siren maybe twice last year. Twice a year there's a motocross event at the top of the hill for 5 or 6 hours on a Sunday. It's distant noise to us, but again, with no background noise, we do hear them. We have two neighbours who drive in and out now and then, get their grocery deliveries once or twice a week, cut their grass.
The pheasant shoot make the most noise, once every couple of weeks in the winter. When they separate the lambs from the ewes, it's a racket for a week or two. The hedge cutter is a terrible racket for a week or so once a year.
I'm sure there are places that have perfect peace and quiet in the UK, but it depends how remote you're willing to live whether you can cope with living in one of them. Usually there's a reason why no one lives there - no water, terrible weather, that sort of thing.
It's all relative.
Where my parents lived just outside Truro, going back some years, we heard Concorde, as Lyn says, we used to hear - or rather feel - blasting at Wheal Jane. Ambulance and fire engine sirens were more or less continuous because the main hospital - Treliske - was near by, as was the Fire Station. In those days, they used to call the firemen into the station by sounding the air raid 'All Clear' siren. And the A&E department was in City Hospital, in the town, but helicopters had to land at Treliske, so ambulances would be going up and down the road near the house between the two sites all day and night. They were constantly overflown by helicopters to and from Treliske or just practising (Thursdays were known as 'Find Treliske Day'). Where we used to live on the outskirts of Bristol, we could hear the A38 about half a mile away, constant traffic. On some days - when the wind was from the Northeast - the final approach and take off paths for flights to and from Bristol Airport would come directly over the house. That would wake you up. Air balloons used to come over all the time as well, especially early morning flights taking off from Ashton Court and the burners would be loud enough to wake you. And sirens there as well, up and down the A38.
So it seems very quiet here, by comparison. Albeit not by any means without machine noise.
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
We get high level aircraft which can be seen on clear days but not heard, we sometimes get medium height aircraft which can be quite loud I believe that they are on a flight path to land at Coventry airport, I could be wrong as they could be landing at Birmingham or even on a holding path to Luton, this happens infrequently. We sometimes get military jets and helicopters as we are on a flight path between the East coast bases and the Welsh training areas, I am led to believe that the flight path is designed to miss large urban areas. We are less than ten miles from a small airfield from which we get light aircraft especially last weekend when people were flying into the Grand Prix, and of course we often see and hear police and air ambulance helicopters. Even with all of this air traffic I wouldn't say that the disturbance was particularly disturbing, in fact on days when we don't see aircraft it seems a bit unnerving in a strange way a bit like it would be not hearing the birds.
We have friends who live in Wes Ealing so get every plane going to Heathrow. They are one street in from a main road so buses all day, trucks, cars, motorbikes, sirens form ambulances, police and fire services plus being overlooked by neighbours and their noises. Light pollution too form all the street lamps and headlights and outside lights and sensor operated lights and all the bins outside for assorted rubbish.
Can't bear it.
The first time they came to visit us in Belgium she said it was very green, all that open space, and so quiet she couldn't sleep.
Here we have fewer cars - so few we notice when one goes past, similar numbers of tractors, occasional harvesters, cows mooing cos they're in the barns/calving/going out to pasture, occasional dogs barking in the kennels up the road during holiday periods. Any commercial jets go over very high up and we only know when they leave a vapour trail. Occasional helicopter and occasional ULM from an airfield 20kms away. Occasional military flight. No light pollution. Our own dogs bark when a cyclist or walker goes past.
Lots of birds whose calls I don't often recognise and there's one at dusk which sounds like a squeaky wheel on a rusty bike.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
But we get some local traffic - there is a military airport not too far and they do some exercises around. We also have a small civil airport nearby and have some recreational traffic from there. And we can sometimes also hear Snowdonia mountain rescue helicopter. But 95% of the time it's quiet.
I think you would need to go south from us to get completely quiet. Somewhere around Barmouth, Tywyn, maybe south toward Aberystwyth or east to Bala.
I've camped up towards Bird Rock near Tywyn a few times and it can be lovely and quiet up that valley.
I also stay in a cottage in Snowdonia every year and it's miles from anywhere at the end of a track 30 mins drive from the main road. It's surrounded by hills on 3 sides and should be whisper quiet unless a plane is directly overhead. Sadly the RAF use Snowdonia as a playground despite the noise and pollution they cause in the National Park. We've had hours of jet noise echoing around the hills some days. When they stop playing Topgun though it's about as quiet as it gets up there. The day we usually leave is also used by the local Rally society to race around the local woods so you have to be careful not to pick your holiday on a Rally weekend too.
The blight around here is scramblers. Almost every day kids will be ripping around the local hills and woods on illegal bikes. I can't see how it's so hard for the police to catch them with modern technology these days. Send up a couple of drones, follow them home and confiscate the bikes.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
What about looking at the dark sky map as a starting point, Fire? Presumably if there is no light pollution, there will be little in the way of human settlement and thus no traffic. Overlay that with the flight path map to eliminate overhead noise, pack your ⛺️ and off you go to enjoy a peaceful starry night!
We live above a winding, steep country lane, so there is some traffic during the day (chuffing, belching ancient 4x4s, tractors, bloody mamils, the odd lorry transporting mineral water from the local source) but not on a flight path. At night, however, its dark and peaceful. Apart from the scops owls, nightjars, barking deer, screeching foxes, grunting wild boar crashing through the forest...
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
We get everything airborne here - hot air balloons, microlights, Spitfires, Hurricanes, Lancaster, Vulcan, Red Arrows, Chinooks low enough to vibrate the house, helicopters servicing Goodwood and polo matches, large jets for Gatwick and smaller executive jets for Farnborough. There were also all sorts of exotics from airshows at Farnborough and Dunsfold. There was a letter complaining about increased aircraft noise in the local paper last week.
Road traffic isn't too bad and we can recognize the sound of a local traction engine when he goes on an outing or a passing steam train on the Portsmouth line. Friends down from London were kept awake because it was too quiet except for the creatures of the night which terrified them. Occasionally WW3 breaks out when local military ranges get going. Quite a varied soundscape for a small market town.
Reading all this makes me feel that I am getting off lightly. Aircraft wise, for large aircraft generally all l see are contrails very high up. The police helicopter now and again (usually as l'm drifting off to sleep), the odd light aircraft approaching Gloucestershire Airport . Sirens are more of a thing, usually from 8am for around an hour and a half, then they start again around the time of the afternoon school run until about 6pm. Kid round the corner had a "fart car" that OH could hear coming from at least half a mile away, but he's got rid of that. Cars go by with the bass thumping now and again. I wish you luck with your search
I can see planes but can't hear them. I'm about half an hour from Glasgow airport, and the sem from Prestwick. We get a few more at this time of year when all the Glaswegians get on their Easyjet flights to 'Blackpool with sun'. Even then, they're not an issue.
There are huge parts of Scotland where you wouldn't see or hear planes. I rather like being on hill summits and seeing the trails accompanied by the sound of silence
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
@wild edges Yes, I mentioned the military planes. They are usually around Anglesey or above the sea between Anglesey and Llyn peninsula. But yes, they use Snowdonia to practice low flying and mountain flying. But I don't think it's too often.
I guess it's better more south, in mid-Wales. But even here, everyone who visits us, says how quiet it is here.
Cars can be much bigger problems than planes. When we were house hunting, I was fascinated by how complicated it is, how hard to guess if a house is going to be noisy or not. The whole north coast between Bangor and Llandudno is very bad because of the A55 but sometimes there are places behind some terrain blocking the noise and they are perfectly quiet. It's almost impossible to tell from looking on a map.
I can't stand cars these days. I lived close to a highway most of my childhood, then in a major city with constant traffic and then again close to a main road. But I can't do it anymore, I couldn't go back to living in a city.
And then there are neighbours mowing grass I am a night owl, I sleep in the morning and they often wake me up. But I can live with that
Get local noise from Halfpenny Green airport, occasionally a police helicopter passes overhead. The large planes from Birmingham Airport are too high to bother us.
The quietest place I have ever been was in the middle of the desert in Egypt when we went stargazing, it was amazing.
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We hear the occasional tractor labouring up the hill a couple of miles away - mostly during muck-spreading season. And when one or other local farmer is haying, there'll be tractor machine noise all day for a couple of days. I think I heard a police/ambulance siren maybe twice last year. Twice a year there's a motocross event at the top of the hill for 5 or 6 hours on a Sunday. It's distant noise to us, but again, with no background noise, we do hear them. We have two neighbours who drive in and out now and then, get their grocery deliveries once or twice a week, cut their grass.
The pheasant shoot make the most noise, once every couple of weeks in the winter. When they separate the lambs from the ewes, it's a racket for a week or two. The hedge cutter is a terrible racket for a week or so once a year.
I'm sure there are places that have perfect peace and quiet in the UK, but it depends how remote you're willing to live whether you can cope with living in one of them. Usually there's a reason why no one lives there - no water, terrible weather, that sort of thing.
It's all relative.
Where my parents lived just outside Truro, going back some years, we heard Concorde, as Lyn says, we used to hear - or rather feel - blasting at Wheal Jane. Ambulance and fire engine sirens were more or less continuous because the main hospital - Treliske - was near by, as was the Fire Station. In those days, they used to call the firemen into the station by sounding the air raid 'All Clear' siren. And the A&E department was in City Hospital, in the town, but helicopters had to land at Treliske, so ambulances would be going up and down the road near the house between the two sites all day and night. They were constantly overflown by helicopters to and from Treliske or just practising (Thursdays were known as 'Find Treliske Day').
Where we used to live on the outskirts of Bristol, we could hear the A38 about half a mile away, constant traffic. On some days - when the wind was from the Northeast - the final approach and take off paths for flights to and from Bristol Airport would come directly over the house. That would wake you up. Air balloons used to come over all the time as well, especially early morning flights taking off from Ashton Court and the burners would be loud enough to wake you. And sirens there as well, up and down the A38.
So it seems very quiet here, by comparison. Albeit not by any means without machine noise.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Can't bear it.
The first time they came to visit us in Belgium she said it was very green, all that open space, and so quiet she couldn't sleep.
Here we have fewer cars - so few we notice when one goes past, similar numbers of tractors, occasional harvesters, cows mooing cos they're in the barns/calving/going out to pasture, occasional dogs barking in the kennels up the road during holiday periods. Any commercial jets go over very high up and we only know when they leave a vapour trail. Occasional helicopter and occasional ULM from an airfield 20kms away. Occasional military flight. No light pollution. Our own dogs bark when a cyclist or walker goes past.
Lots of birds whose calls I don't often recognise and there's one at dusk which sounds like a squeaky wheel on a rusty bike.
We live above a winding, steep country lane, so there is some traffic during the day (chuffing, belching ancient 4x4s, tractors, bloody mamils, the odd lorry transporting mineral water from the local source) but not on a flight path. At night, however, its dark and peaceful. Apart from the scops owls, nightjars, barking deer, screeching foxes, grunting wild boar crashing through the forest...
Road traffic isn't too bad and we can recognize the sound of a local traction engine when he goes on an outing or a passing steam train on the Portsmouth line. Friends down from London were kept awake because it was too quiet except for the creatures of the night which terrified them. Occasionally WW3 breaks out when local military ranges get going. Quite a varied soundscape for a small market town.
Sirens are more of a thing, usually from 8am for around an hour and a half, then they start again around the time of the afternoon school run until about 6pm.
Kid round the corner had a "fart car" that OH could hear coming from at least half a mile away, but he's got rid of that. Cars go by with the bass thumping now and again.
I wish you luck with your search
There are huge parts of Scotland where you wouldn't see or hear planes. I rather like being on hill summits and seeing the trails accompanied by the sound of silence
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...