Great Breach Wood is part of Butleigh Woods, covering the Polden Hills a few miles south of Glastonbury. It is owned and managed by the Somerset Wildlife Trust.

These and the neighbouring woods offer a refreshing change to the open landscape of the Somerset Levels. To get to the woods from Glastonbury it is necessary to cross the Vale of Avalon to the Butleigh side, follow the road along the top of the Poldens to Wickham's Cross above Butleigh, and stop at the large gates a few hundred yards further along the road and uphill.

Walking along the forestry track, you reach the centre of the forest when you reach the Wellingtonia or Sequoia tree (called Wellingtonia apparently because they were planted in the 1820s to celebrate the Duke of Wellington, a national hero and the Winston Churchill of that time). There are signs of an old woodland settlement here.

If you proceed along one of the paths heading west through the woods you reach the escarpment of the Polden Hills, overlooking the rather blessed landscape of Dundon - Compton Dundon village and Dundon Beacon, with the southern Somerset Levels below.

Both the woods and the Polden slopes are habitats for many species of butterfly, some of them rare. This is tenuous, however, since climate change and the lack of contiguous habitats in Britain, along which butterflies may migrate, puts certain species under stress.The woods also host lovely orchids (do not pick!).

Although the forest is managed, it has many characteristics of the ancient forests of Somerset and the South West. One reason people in the area lived on hilltops, in so-called 'hillforts', was simply forest claustrophobia. In ancient times, 97% of Britain was forested - now it is 4%. Forest was difficult to travel in, full of bugs and flies, in places boggy, and inhabited then by boars, bears and wolves.