Katie Scott, sparkly, gentle, creator and collaborator

It feels a little odd to put an article about myself on my own website. However, so many people have suggested that I should also be included, and as I was interviewed for the August/September 2025 edition of The Northumbrian, I thought, well, why not!

Katie's well-thumbed copy!

It's beautiful morning in the riverside car park in Rothbury and I am in no doubt who Katie Scott is as I pull up and park. She has a gentle but instantly sparkly presence, and in the time it takes to sit down on the bench beside her, is telling me about the trees - the Rothbury Tree Trail trees. And how, while she loves to help others shine, she's very nervous about being interviewed herself, so has brought a list of things she would like to mention that mean a lot to her.

It looks quite a long list.

I stop her within seconds to check I've properly understood. You moved to Rothbury not knowing anyone and started the Rothbury Hospital campaign?

“Yes. They were shutting it down with patients still resident. I was able to get a good group of people together who knew how the NHS worked. It was a fantastic team - different people with different skill sets who put together the case against closure. I even went to the Houses of Parliament to argue for a change in the way these cases were reviewed. It took six years, but now not only do we have NHS beds, but also a small care home, which we never thought we would.”

And a GP's surgery and dentist. It's a handsome complex not far from where we're sitting. But we're here to talk about the Rothbury Tree Trail, also led by Katie. We will get to it.

A 'Toony', as they're dubbed in these parts, Katie, who has lived in many places, moved from Newcastle to Rothbury in 2014 after taking early retirement. She and her husband John had considered Wooler and similar-sized villages and small towns, but after spending two nights here in a wet and dreary October (intentionally, to get the most realistic impression) they knew this was the place for them. They - and the town - haven't looked back since.

Katie, hosting the poetry event for What a Wonderful World, at the Rothbury Golf Club.

Following the hospital campaign, Katie moved her attention to artists and craftspeople, founding Coquetdale Creatives in 2019. “I'm really proud of it,” she says. “It seemed to me there was a massive amount of creativity in Coquetdale and it would be great to interview people and shine a light on them. Musicians, artists, knitters, all sorts of people.”

She shows me full-page articles she's written about creatives for the Northumberland Gazette.

“I've got loads more to do because I keep hearing about more and more incredibly talented people.”

The Coquetdale Creatives website was her most recent project - a directory of local creative folk.

There's James Tait, the Music Man of Coquetdale; Graham Taylor, potter, experimental archaeologist and ancient pottery technology specialist; Rosalind Kerven, author and folklorist, and many more.

I enter into a fantasy world in which I myself now live in Rothbury.

James Tait.

Graham Taylor.

Ros Kerven.

Before the Coquetdale Creatives project, Katie set up the monthly Rothbury Poetry, Writing and Music event. This takes place on the first Wednesday of the month (bar February and August) and is seriously successful, says Katie, who is proud of the intimate vibe and friendly atmosphere that has evolved.

There is a different guest writer and guest musician each month, and then members of the audience contribute a turn.

“There's always a really intimate atmosphere where people speak from the soul and every time we meet it's life-affirming,” she says.

“What happened was, when I first moved here,I joined a creative writing group in the Rothbury U3A where we write and critique each other's work. I realised that beyond this there was nowhere locally to share all that writing with others.”

Would Katie have taken all this on, staying in Newcastle?

She pauses.

“I don't think so. Newcastle's massive and there's lots going on, but here there were clear gaps.”

You must know everyone? “I do know lots of people. And it is many of these people, from the hospital campaign, Coquetdale Creatives and so on, their north Northumberland accents as ancient as the trees themselves, who voice the trees and provide the music for the tree trail.

The trail began thus:

“I was reading books like Finding the Mother Tree and Entangled Life and Braiding Sweetgrass, thinking that humans are part of that, but have such power over nature. I'm very aware of the need for reciprocity, the need to give as well as take, so I started thinking along these lines and noticing the trees more. Like that one on the other side of the river behind the old toilet block.”

A splendid beech.

I joined the British News Archive, where you can look up stories from old newspapers, I contacted local historians, and thought I would write stories about some of the things that the trees in Rothbury have witnessed over their lives.

Every so often the Gazette would publish the stories.”

She shows me another full page article she's written, a sad story about two beautiful weeping ashes in the gardens of the Armstrong Cottages at Townfoot, felled last year due to ash dieback.

Patsy and Billy Murray, a couple getting on in years, provided the voices for them on the audio that accompanies the tree trail.

Patsy had played under them when she was a child.

Patsy, who voices Tree One, tells us: “Now, before you go, take a good look at us both, for we will not be here for ever.”

Tree Two, voiced by Billy, says: “We have got a nasty disease which is slowly killing us.”

The two ash have now been replaced with a pair of fast growing golden weeping willows, while the presence of the old trees is still felt where they are marked on the trail.

“When I realised that the eight trees I'd picked made made a circle, I thought I'd make a tree trail, a pamphlet,” Katie explains.

“As I was getting going, I met Nick Johnson of the Northumbria Veteran Tree Project, and he said, 'Katie, I've just got funding for this new way of doing a tree trail which is an app on your phone'.

He was working on one for Heaton Park in Newcastle.

Now there is that one, then mine, and also Belsay Hall, and he's working on one now for Hadrian's Wall, so I've put in him in touch with some poets who've written beautiful things about the trees there.”

Patsy and Billy, with Bitsy, at Armstrong Cottages, where the Weeping Ash Trees stood.

Then there's Rothbury Climate and Nature (CAN) - an umbrella organisation for several small groups. Rothbury Rubbish Friends meets monthly to keep the town tidy.

Rothbury Tree Wardens plant, protect and promote local trees. And the Rowans group, which stands for Recovering Our Wild and Natural Spaces, plant wildflowers, bulbs and hedging.

There is also the very successful Coquetdale Repair Café, which meets every six weeks. You can bring a loved but broken object and have it brought back to life over a homemade cake and cup of tea.

“They'll teach you how to repair it yourself as well,” Katie adds. “They take it very seriously.”

Katie's ability to bring people in the community together, to see through problems, and her work on the Tree Trail has deservedly been recognised with a BBC Make A Difference Award, in the Green Category.

Aged 15, she left school in Manchester, which she absolutely hated, and it wasn't until she was older that she grew to love education and gained a first class degree, then a masters degree and teaching qualifications.

She then worked as a teacher in primary and middle schools. “I absolutely loved it,” she says, adding that she became an education consultant for Northumberland County Council before a department reshuffle took away her zeal 12 years ago.

Now, aged 68, “I thought I would be coming here and walking along the river each day, going to exercise classes, hopefully make some nice friends, read poetry and learn some new creative things.

Every year my husband wonders when that's going to happen.”

The Irish Yew, and the Craa Tree.

The Northumbrian Magazine kindly allowed this article to be reproduced, with additional photographs added.