The sea, the sea

Walking into Fingal’s Cave, after scrambling across the rocks to reach it from the landing stage where the boat from Mull arrives, is a strangely emotional experience. It’s not just the extraordinary landscape, the precise, almost unnatural shaping of the hexagonal basalt columns that rise up high above you, the screeching of gulls and roaring of the sea as it enters and leaves the cave. That’s enough to provoke a sense of wonder. But there’s also so much history attached to the place since it was discovered by the Romantics and became the epitome of the sentimental landscape, awesome in scale, and also quite frightening. Mendelssohn, Walter Scott and Turner between them set off the fashion for visiting the cave; even Queen Victoria braved the rocking sea to experience her own moment of insignificance.

On Sunday night’s Between the Ears on Radio 3 (produced by Kate Bissell) it was possible to listen while at the same time taking a virtual visual trip into the cave. I have to confess that listening was enough for me, as we were taken inside it to hear the astonishing booming sound, created by the sea pushing the air back into the cave’s darkest depths and then being released as the sea retires in an explosive whoosh that on a clear day can be heard as far away as the island of Iona. The recordings were made by a group of researchers from the Glasgow School of Art’s School of Simulation and Visualisation and the National Trust for Scotland who camped on Staffa in small tents in the rain, hauling all their gear, food and water up a steep set of steps and two metal ladders to the top of the cliffs. They were lucky to catch the cave in its naked state, no one else there.

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Alongside their actual recordings we could also hear Aaron May’s specially commissioned sound composition, created without him actually visiting Staffa, instead relying on what those recordings captured.