David Attenborough said everyone should spend 10 minutes in the wood – so I did

Broadcaster promised something ‘extraordinary’ would happen. Colin Drury went to the Rivelin Valley woodland in Sheffeld to find out what...

If you go down to the woods today... (Getty/iStock)

It is a cold, wet Friday morning and I am stood alone in a South Yorkshire wood. Underfoot, the ground is ankle-deep mud. Overhead, the sky threatens more rain. The whole vibe is ITV1 police drama. It’s places like this where the bodies are always found.

Yet, according to Sir David Attenborough, this is me doing something “extraordinary”.

The naturalist, broadcaster and all-round living legend urged people this week to spend 10 minutes whenever they could silently immersed in nature. “Sit down, don’t move, keep quiet,” he told the Call Of The Wild podcast. “You’ll be very surprised if something pretty interesting didn’t happen within 10 minutes. Doing that in a woodland, if you haven’t done it, is extraordinary.”

So, this is why I’m here, amid these trees. To find out what the fuss is about.

Sir David himself explained that he found such experiences especially invigorating when done somewhere new. He gave an example of standing in a Costa Rican jungle. But when I suggest taking a similar trip to my news editor – purely in the interests of journalistic rigour – she appears less than convinced. I’m dispatched instead to the Rivelin Valley in Sheffield, a smallish sort of treescape sandwiched in the dip below two housing estates. Almost as good.

“What a lovely assignment,” says Dee Smith from the Woodland Trust when I call for advice ahead of heading out. “My main tip is just to let your senses take over. Listen to the birds and the wind. Take in that lovely rich earthy smell. Go up to a tree and feel the bark. But, above all, just relax and take it in.”

Woods, I think, have a strange place in the British psyche – or is it just mine? As a child of the 1980s and Nineties, they were places of adventure, escapades and freedom from adult eyes, but also, somehow, of low-level menace. Rope swings and dens and astonishing glimpses of wildlife could always be found within but so too could broken glass and shredded cans. Wrong’uns liked the woods. Even now, here as a lone adult male, I feel conspicuous.

Yet spending Sir David’s recommended 10 minutes here, with phone switched off and mind free to wander, is unquestionably a small-scale joy. The birds do indeed sing. The wind does indeed rustle. Go on, I admit it: the bark does indeed feel invigorating.

There is a river and I skim a couple of stones into it. I head to a spot where I have been once before, back in the autumn when I stood with my own little one catching leaves as they fell off the trees in the wind, telling her it was like The Crystal Maze, even though she’s two and has no idea what the Aztec Zone is; and, anyway, one memory sparks into another and when I emerge from them, I’m in another part of the wood and 10 minutes has gone already, and I’m mainly wondering why Sir David didn’t suggest 20. It is vaguely life-affirming, for want of saying something less cliche.

None of which is exactly new thinking, it’s perhaps worth making clear.

The Japanese in particular have long advocated the rejuvenating qualities of woodland. Forest bathing, some people call it. Research shows that such reconnection with trees lowers the heart rate and drives down blood pressure. A study by the University of Derby found it reduced anxiety by 29 per cent. Plants release something called phytoncide which essentially knocks out our stress hormones. It’s probably why, intuitively, so many of us have sought such spaces during the lockdowns of the last year.

Back to nature: Sir David Attenborough (Reuters)

The bonus bit? Assuming you’re not the kind of clown who leaves broken glass or shredded cans, it’s also almost certainly good for the woods too, that Derby study concludes.

That’s because spending time in nature – even small-scale urban woods – appears to increase our sense of being connected to nature and our desire to look after it. As the UK becomes increasingly aware of the existential need to be greener, such a collective sense will be crucial. That is to say: a 10-minute walk in the woods will also help with the sort of attitude shift needed to save the planet.

As Sir David says: extraordinary.