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Right now, I could walk out of my house and not hear any human activity 😁
The wind direction and strength is taking away any vehicle sounds from a rural A-road about half a mile away.
Norfolk, east of Norwich and close to the Broads.
I can see the hills above Welshfarmer, but from up there I won't be able to see his or home.
Used to live in an off grid house in the woods, remote from civilisation, just 5 minutes ride from the edge of Plymouth (so possibly still not that close to civilisation).
I live on the edge of the biggest city in the country. It takes me a while to get anywhere without any human activity.
Most places I go* I'd struggle not to hear myself breathing. It's a crying shame spoiling the nature of the surroundings oh god the humanity exclamation mark.
*edit - remote places, it's not like I can hear my wheeze above M25 traffic etc.
Arkengarthdale is pretty good, until the RAF appear.
I live in Hong Kong, its pretty crowded, on an island next to the airport, its a major airport. Even though over 60% of HK is country parks you would be hard pressed to find seclusion unless you really went off-piste, during the weekdays.
By car, 5 mins drive up the lane plus a few mins walk and I'm onto Mynydd y Gwair, between Swansea and the Brecon Beacons.
Which is nice.
When i find a moment of peace and true quiet, some dick on a stupidly loud motorbike feels it is their right to destroy it.
I really hate motorbikes outside of urban centres.
About 10 minutes, I reckon.
Over the river, past the Soviet war memorial, and off into the woods.
Although that particular wood is the result of past human activity. And current human activity might be heard (but not seen) in the form of planes flying over.
On to plan B: About 30 mins on the train in any direction, jump off, then ride to one of the numerous lakes that dot the proper old forests.
When i find a moment of peace and true quiet, some dick on a stupidly loud motorbike feels it is their right to destroy it.
I really hate motorbikes outside of urban centres.
I feel the same about planes.
Unless I’m on one in which case it’s perfectly justifiable.
If I ignore that the whole landscape in this country (pretty much) has been altered by human activity, then literally out of my back door. My nearest neighbours are 3 or 4 hundred yards away, but the lie of the land means I can't see them. What I can see is the Shropshire hills, woodland, pasture, lots of sheep and a pair of red kites circling above, causing my chickens to panic and hide in the bushes. I quite like it here.
A couple of hundred metres down the BW that runs past the house and I'm in a small secluded valley. Does depend on the time of year as to what I can see - if the trees are in full leaf then I can't even see our house or the house on the other side of the valley. Might be a bit noisy if the farmer is getting a cut of silage from the nearby fields.
We've a main road about a mile away but we don't hear the traffic unless there's particular atmospheric conditions which leads it to being a dull rumble/drone. Occasionally we can hear the trains on the line between Leeds - Skipton - Settle but again it depends on conditions.
There are lots of places in the UK where you can't see or hear any human activity for most of the time, three of my favourites: Great Moss in upper Eskdale in the Lakes; Fisherfield; the HT550 route between Gobernuisgach Lodge and Bealach Horn.
There are lots of places in the UK where you can’t see or hear any human activity for most of the time
and some really surprising ones like the area around Bank in the city of London on Boxing Day night!!
About this time last year I was staying in a hotel in Manchester having just moved and the beast from the east hit with it's massive warnings, I wandered back from dinner through a deserted city centre, quite, peaceful and still. It was bloody cold though!!
This popped up earlier. Not much sign of human influence...
https://twitter.com/bbcearth/status/1083729492571553792
Just to clarify ..I don’t really mean ANY evidence of humans ..more that you hear no sound of the buggers …just nature in all it’s unspoilt glory.
The paradox really is the further you get away from the sound of modern life the more apparent it is. I used to live is a cottage in a field in the middle the highlands and the first thing anyone said when they came to stay was 'its a shame you can hear the traffic'. The next place I lived was a flat on a corner in Glasgow which people described as 'eerily quiet'
When I lived up north I used to travel to London quite a lot and it was always surprised that while I could hear every car within a few miles from my house I could park at the London Gateway services on the M1 - facing the traffic and not be able to hear any of them - it seemed to be dead quiet.
As an aside... talking of quiet and distant noise. I've never been able to find it again... but there was a remarkable program on Radio 4 once by David Blunkett - he used to make recordings of 'the night' - exploring and describing the landscape by listening to sounds on the horizon. It was really, really lovely radio.
As a second aside... the reason you have fountains in city parks and squares isn't really for what they look like but what they sound like - they're white noise generators and block out the sound of the rest of city.
Locally, virtually no chance, Wiltshire is a big county, but there’s nowhere that’s really remote from any human influence.
About the nearest I ever got was just after the countryside access ban following the F&M outbreak ended, I took the bike over to Avebury and did a ride over to West Kennet longbarrow, then up onto the Ridgeway, across to Rockley, then picked up the byway that went across to Barbary Castle. At that moment, I don’t think anyone had realised the countryside was now open, and there wasn’t a soul about. I was sat on the bike, looking around, I couldn’t really see any houses, and apart from a motorbike way off in he distance I could only hear the wind and the birds, skylarks, crows, and a few others.
It was a remarkable sensation, the only other time I felt even more alone was in the Park du Volcans in France, and the cloud came down and smothered everything, there wasn’t a sound, no wind, no birds, just silence.