Firefighters were joined by scores of soldiers, forestry workers and park staff in a battle to contain a massive moorland blaze raging towards a North village at the weekend.

Families in Harbottle in the Upper Coquet Valley were advised to keep their doors and windows closed as smoke billowed through the isolated community from one of the worst wildfires to hit Northumberland in years.

At the height of the blaze, 40 firefighters were joined by soldiers from the Army camp at Otterburn and staff from the Northumberland National Park and Forest Enterprise to ensure it didn't break through woodland and threaten the village.

A Sea King helicopter from RAF Boulmer and a private helicopter commissioned by Forest Enterprise flew together for several hours on Saturday night to drop water bombs and help douse the flames breaking through moorland and into Harbottle Forest.

Using large buckets suspended from the aircraft, the crews scooped up water from a nearby lake and tipped it over the areas where the fire was burning most fiercely.

The blaze was brought under control by midnight on Saturday but a fire crew stayed in Harbottle throughout the night to reassure villagers that there was no risk of it re-igniting and threatening their homes.

Scores of firefighters, soldiers and civilian workers continued to tackle the incident, yesterday, digging out and damping down ground-level hot spots to ensure a major blaze did not re-start.

In all, the fire destroyed about eight square kilometres of forest and moorland and the firefighting operation involved around 100 personnel at its peak.

The incident started at 2pm on Saturday when the Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service received reports of a moorland fire at Holystone, which was heading quickly towards Harbottle Forest.

Fanned by a light, westerly wind the flames reached the edge of the forest between 4pm and 5pm and the incident was tackled by the Northumberland Fire Group, a partnership between the fire service, local landowners, Forest Enterprise, the MoD and the National Park.

The partner organisations provided around 60 personnel with equipment to help eight fire crews contain the advancing fire.

The Northumbria Police helicopter was also deployed to provide an airborne fire service officer with an eye-in-the-sky observation facility above the developing incident.

Fire service Station Officer John Arnold, who helped coordinate the operation, said yesterday: "Harbottle village was not in any danger from the fire, which was never nearer than 500m away, but it was quite heavily smoke-logged.

"We were confident throughout that the village didn't need to be evacuated but the residents were advised by police to keep their windows and doors shut. In fact, people were lining the street holding cups of tea, glasses of wine and bottles of beer, watching the events unfolding.

"Today the various agencies involved met up again at 8am to carry out the painstaking and gruelling task of damping down hotspots in Harbottle Forest with shovels. That will continue all day and probably all day tomorrow.

"This was a very serious wildfire which required all of these various agencies to come together and deal with it. It is the biggest fire we have had this year and perhaps in the last five years."

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Lessons from Catalonia

The Harbottle blaze provided a major test for a multi-agency partnership set up to deal with potentially devastating moorland and forest fires in Northumberland.

The Northumberland Fire Group was launched last year by the county's fire chiefs and key personnel have been to Catalonia in Spain to learn vital lessons in how to tackle major wildfire incidents.

It involves the fire service working in tandem with the Northumberland National Park, Forest Enterprise, the MoD and other local landowners to pool joint resources and share knowledge and skills.

Vast areas of forest and heather moors are a major part of the county's economy and the risk of wildfires in off-road areas is on the increase as a result of the drier winters and summers of recent years.

Mr Arnold said yesterday: "This is exactly the sort of incident which the Northumberland Fire Group was set up to respond to.

"It has been a real test of the training we have been doing and our partnership working and, I am pleased to say, a very successful one."