Butterflies and Battlefields

A couple of weeks ago I played truant from the writing and went on a trip to Somerset. Somerset is one of my favourite places. I lived there for seven years in my haunted cottage and it's a place I love re-visiting whenever I can. It's a county that feels particularly steeped in history and folkore.

On this occasion I was combining some natural history with some English Civil War history. We were on a trip to find the Large Blue Butterfly at Collard Hill, a few miles from Glastonbury. The...