Into the woods
Roe deer roam widely on the routes Anthony enjoyed on this Tyne Valley afternoon out
First published in edition 207 of The Northumbrian, Aug/Sept 2025
Anthony Toole explores Juliet’s Wood in the Tyne Valley, where wildlife abounds alongside wildflowers and tall trees, before heading to the charming South Close Field nature reserve
Slaley village seems to me to be a bit out of the way. Its comfortable houses occupy a little over a kilometre along a road that doesn’t appear to want to lead anywhere else. This gives it a quiet ambience in which its distinguishing features include a 350-year-old pub, a first school, a community shop that seems only to open for half a day a week, and a church and cemetery that are much bigger than might be expected in such a small place.
When I was last there, I parked opposite the church and followed the narrow footpath that led alongside the cemetery and ended at a gate into a fallow field. Though the footpath, according to the map and a series of signposts, led directly across the field, I skirted its edge and those of subsequent fields and in half an hour reached a gate to Juliet’s Wood, a Northumberland Wildlife Trust nature reserve.
A good track led gently downhill through tall trees, mostly conifers but with a scattering of deciduous and holly bushes of various sizes. The floor was covered with the woodland flowers of early spring – stitchwort, celandine and wood anemone – above which speckled wood and orange tip butterflies chased frantically. Several trees had been cut down and left, some alone, some in small log piles, to make homes and food for fungi and invertebrates, which would themselves in time become essential parts of the higher food chain.
This semi-natural woodland is of a type generally populated by roe deer and possibly badgers and other smaller mammals, though the tree density allows them to remain hidden. The birds also stayed largely unseen, occupying the high canopy, which they filled with their continuous song. As I continued downhill, a few tiny violets pushed through the still sparse grass, while the wood anemones gave way to wood sorrel and its sour-tasting, clover-like leaves.
The northern edge of the wood was marked by a tiny, sluggish stream crossed by a bridge, between the stones of which grew small clumps of ivy-leaved toadflax. The stream banks were covered with wild garlic, while pond skaters slid across the surface of an almost still pool. Beyond the stream, a broad track led steeply uphill to the buildings of East Woodfoot.
I now followed a footpath eastward, which ran parallel to the stream for a short distance then veered away from it, entering a patch of newer woodland consisting largely of coppiced hazel. The track passed moss-covered ridges that had once been stone walls and entered another area of taller trees, mature beech, sycamore, holly and rowan, and a ground cover of dog’s mercury, ending at a gate that marked the eastern limit of the wood. Another track led along the southern boundary. I followed this for a short distance to a fallen tree where I sat for a while, the better to appreciate my surroundings.
The trees themselves were silent. The breeze, such as it was, caused only the gentlest sway in a few nearby fern fronds. Abundant butterflies flew past, again mostly speckled wood and orange tip, with the occasional small white. The sounds were exclusively of birdsong, which was incessant. Only the infrequent small bird flew between holly bushes and disappeared before I could put a name to it. The calls were almost entirely those of the same small birds that sang way above their sizes: chiff-chaffs, robins, wrens, blackbirds, various warblers and possibly the rasping call of a grasshopper warbler, which is a bird often heard but rarely seen. After several minutes, I continued along the track, which led downhill, to join my original footpath, which took me back to the entrance gate. I had spent more than an hour absorbing the tranquility of Juliet’s Wood without meeting another person.
Occasionally on a quiet country walk you meet the unexpected. On my way back to Slaley, just north of the village rose a small hill on top of which a fence surrounded a hidden structure. Curious, I detoured to investigate. A notice, faded almost to invisibility, forbade entrance to the site, which I assumed might have been a small reservoir. In fact, it was a nuclear bunker, opened in 1961 and closed in 1991 as the Cold War ended. It was one of around 30 scattered throughout Northumberland, designed to be occupied by two or three people for an indefinite period, until radiation from a possible nuclear attack had fallen to a level low enough for the occupants to emerge and provide some rudimentary functioning of what remained of society.
My homeward drive brought me through Riding Mill, which, though it has a similar population to Slaley, could hardly be more different. The main road through the village branched out, almost maze-like, in several directions past large, detached houses in substantial wooded grounds. One of these roads, Marchburn Lane, is private and leads on foot only to South Close Field, a tiny nature reserve, entry to which requires permission from Northumberland Wildlife Trust. Having obtained that permission, I entered the field through a wooden gate at the end of the lane. The field sloped steeply upward to the north. As there were no trees to hide it, the first thing I saw was a roe deer grazing in the far corner. After several seconds, it unhurriedly jumped the fence and vanished into the surrounding wood. This time, the striking bird call was unmistakably that of a chiff-chaff. Peacock butterflies augmented speckled woods and orange tips. The more abundant flowers were dandelions, celandines, primroses and cowslips, with bluebells and wild garlic at the woodland edges and a small patch of wild strawberry flowers near the entrance gate.
The ground was uneven, having been well trampled by Exmoor ponies in winter. The pressure of their hooves encouraging the germination of seeds that in later spring turn the field into a hay meadow. Indeed, a few of these hay-time flowers were making a scattered appearance, including buttercup, cow parsley, bird’s foot trefoil and parasitic yellow rattle. A rickety wooden fence surrounded an overgrown reed patch to which a few red campions added colour. This should have been a small pond, but the unbroken sunny weather of the previous weeks had dried it out, giving little chance to the amphibians and invertebrates that might have populated it. Perhaps they were lying dormant until the rain arrived.