Last week, I walked through a minefield without wearing any protective equipment. Before you start reaching for a phone book to find me a suitable mental-health professional - and you wouldn't be the first - let me explain.

The day before my apparently foolhardy act, the minefield in question had been cleared of every one of its 551 mines and 104 unexploded munitions. Every last inch of ground had been probed, prodded and scraped away. Just as importantly, not a single deminer was killed or injured in the process.

This minefield - perhaps "former minefield" would be a better term - is on the 45-degree slope of a mountainside in the Kurdish region of Iraq. It's on the edge of the village of Darband and its newly turned earth is liberally sprinkled with long-untended olive trees.

Of course, the tiny village of Darband is stilled partially hemmed in by the remaining minefields, but today I'm only concentrating on the positives. And finishing a minefield is about as positive as it is possible to get in my business.

I can't emphasise enough what a wonderful achievement this is. It has taken over a year to clear. It has been an age of agonisingly slow, cautious and dangerous work. The back-breaking effort was interrupted only when rain or snow made it too slippery to continue safely.

Ten deminers from the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) have devoted a year of their lives to digging the mines out of this steep and stony ground. They didn't complain when temperatures climbed above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and they didn't complain - at least very much - when the temperature fell below 5 degrees C (41 F).

Judging by the smiles on their faces, the deminers are experiencing the sort of rush normally associated with completing a marathon. That makes sense; some minefields are more difficult to clear than others, but few can be more difficult than this one.

Even though there are no mines left in this vast expanse of land, I know that a few deminers are off somewhere in the distance. They will be working their way around the edge of the minefield and happily removing the sun-faded danger signs.

I'm alone in the middle of the cleared area. Rumour has it that on some days Iranian artillery shells can be heard exploding in the distance but today is very, very quiet. The only sound is the leaves of the olive trees rattling in the stiff breeze.

I feel euphoric merely to be associated with the clearance effort. I prodded and scraped away a few cubic inches of soil, but that was just a token effort to see how difficult it was. The deminers did all the real work and they deserve all the credit.

Aside from the olive trees, the only things standing upright are randomly placed clusters of little yellow sticks. Each one is a neatly cut length of wood protruding a foot out of the ground with letters and numbers scrawled around the top.

There are hundreds of these yellow sticks - 551 to be exact. Each one represents the former position of a mine. We use them to try to identify mine patterns. But this minefield was too steep for patterns. The rain washed the mines all over the mountainside.

Meandering back to my waiting vehicle, I noticed two local villagers chatting with my bodyguards. They were older men, wearing the traditional Kurdish pantaloons and black and white headdresses.

The men had come to watch the final moments of this minefield's existence. Smiling, they greeted me effusively. The taller one rolled up his left trouser leg to show me the skin-coloured plastic underneath. He tapped it with his walking stick and nodded toward the minefield. There was no hiding the excitement he felt at what MAG had achieved here.

Meeting them was the perfect end to my visit. I knew that this minefield would claim no more legs. Soon the land will be formally handed back to the local community and, like the mines before them, the yellow sticks will be gone forever.

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