IT was like something from an episode of Vera, the detective show boasting the worst Geordie accents in the western world.

Lying in a shallow depression, close to a tree, was a glittering heap of brass cartridge cases, with the whiff of cordite still hanging in the air. It was clearly a spot where someone had lain in wait for a carefully-planned ambush, before blazing away from cover at an unsuspecting target.

Lying a little further away was a fist-sized segmented metallic device, with what looked like a plastic handle attached

“Does that look like a hand grenade to you?” I quavered to my aged companion.

“I don’t know and I’m not hanging round to find out,” came the reply, as he put a surprising amount of distance between us and the ambush spot in a very rapid time for one so large.

No, we had not blundered into a crime scene, or even onto a film set – we were taking a gentle afternoon stroll over the wide open spaces of the Otterburn Ranges.

I have always enjoyed country walks from the Sundays my father used to drag us through leafy woods, along canal towpaths and over blowy headlands to work up a thirst for his liquid lunch. So when I was invited to take an hour’s stroll across the ranges, I jumped at the chance.

I have long been fascinated by “the camp” as it is fondly called by the folk of the North Tyne and Redewater, and woe betide anyone who tries to muscle in on the way of life there.

Mountaineer Sir Chris Bonington found this out the hard way when he joined objectors to plans by the Ministry of Defence to expand the ranges to accommodate MLRS weaponry and AS90 tanks. He found the locals much harder to conquer that the north face of the Eiger, as he was roundly abused and sent packing before permission was granted.

It was reputedly the idea of Sir Winston Churchill himself to turn the harsh moorland of the Upper Rede Valley into the perfect place for training troops, which it formally became in 1911, but in truth, the tramp of military boots had echoed over Otterburn for millennia before that. The range is dotted with the remains of Roman marching camps as well as burial sites and Dere Street itself, and there is also abundant evidence of later conflicts with reivers and raiding Scots in the multiple bastle houses and pele towers.

Despite those forbidding red flags and the occasional crump of high explosives, the ranges offer a great deal to anyone with a cagoule and a stout pair of boots.

It’s not every day you can get up close and personal with a bounding roe deer, watch a curlew burbling out its evocative cry from a few yards away or see a Roman road marching for the far horizons pretty much as it was 2,000 years ago.

And there’s also the added frisson of danger, with the knowledge that you could be blasted into bloody shreds of nothingness at any moment by an unexploded projectile concealed in the heather.

Because it was protected from the curse of Northumberland, the creation of serried ranks of densely-packed conifers, by its military status, there is all manner of wildlife dodging the shells on the ranges, and I have no reason to doubt the tale that a few years ago, the crew of a Belgian Air Force helicopter followed what could be the legendary Tynedale Black Cat over the moors for about half an hour before losing it in woodland.

The rare black grouse abound, along with spectacularly -horned wild goats, and adders are so abundant that soldiers are regularly bitten and invalided home.

It came as something of a surprise to learn that the Ministry of Defence actively encourages members of the public to stroll round the 58,000 acre vastness of the ranges subject to the stricture to stick to paths and not to touch anything you may find lying round, for the very simple reason it may kill you in the messiest way possible.

There are always soldiers of many nations undergoing training at Otterburn, and it can be quite unnerving when they pop up from the bracken bristling with machine guns, but they are usually pretty friendly, and have been known to offer walkers bacon sandwiches from their field kitchens.

We were not so lucky on this occasion, but it was still an enjoyable afternoon.