This elder bush is putting on a fine show of blooms, celebrating the refurbished "kissing gate" which leads into the hay meadow - that's red valerian on the wall and Cross Plain in the background.

After getting a little too warm on a brisk walk along the railway path, Winscombe Tunnel Cutting is very welcome, it feels several degrees cooler. This is a view towards the tunnel. The Cheddar Valley Railway Walk Society is installing very discreet solar-powered, person-activated "catseye" lights in the floor of the tunnel --- which will be turned off at night so as not to disturb the colony of bats which roost there.

In a shady nook, down the side of the embankment overlooking the "big field", one may choose to take one's ease at couple of memorial seats.

Nearby are several Great Mullein plants, all of which were hosting Mullein moth caterpillars. The photographs probably should be titled "Big bruvva."

Winscombe Tunnel Cutting - such a relief after the heat. A cool breeze blows steadily out of the dark 100m tunnel and it's just like walking into mild air-conditioning.

Several robins have nests in the cutting walls and don't seem to be too bothered about us standing around watching them hunting. Each pair has its own stretch of cutting and they flit amongst the spindly shrubs and ferns, picking up insects. They are, as the bird book fittingly describes, "confiding" --- in that they will perch unconcerned on nearby branches and grub around in the leaf litter quite close to us.

The adult sheep in the big field have been sheared recently but many are obviously feeling the heat --- however the ash tree seems to be doing sterling service. Behind us, in a hawthorn shrub on the other side of the embankment, a blackcap is singing and chattering to himself. They used to be summer visitors but many are now overwintering in the UK. We've been feeding a pair all winter, so it's nice to get some return on investment.

Although this year's Spring was a little late (and, on occasion a little wet) June is turning out to be a good month, weather-wise. The trees are in full leaf at this stage and I was particularly struck by the colour combination of blue sky, green Sycamore leaves and the developing red-brown keys.

Down by the memorial seats on the side of the embankment and overlooking the big field, the dogwood is in bloom, attracting a considerable number of bees and other insects.

There were fewer dog violets on Shute Shelve Hill slopes this year but the rock roses seem to be having a bumper year --- looking up from the town one can see a yellow carpet on the upper slopes.

Around this time last year we visited Charterhouse several times over a couple of weeks and on each visit we saw Green Hairstreak butterflies in the same area. We thought we'd take the gamble and asked Steve if he'd be interested in an outing to Charterhouse for a picnic and an offchance of seeing some Green Hairstreaks. Fortunately, we were not disappointed and got some good views and some decent close-ups.

We also saw a couple of lizards and what we took to be a couple of Clouded Yellow butterflies but the former were wriggling rapidly for cover, the latter just pelted past and quickly disappeared round the hill - very strong fliers.

We're quite fond of the various beetles we meet in the course of our meanderings, we're getting to recognise some of the different varieties but we hadn't come across one of these before. Unsurprisingly, it's called a "Swollen-thighed beetle".

The local newspaper carried a small article advising that now is a good time to keep an eye open for glow-worms. We'd seen one once before in Cornwall but didn't expect to see any round here as we thought there would be too much artificial illumination. However, disused railway lines are specifically mentioned as likely sites, so we thought we'd take a late-night turn along the railway walk --- and saw four glow-worms the first night and three the following night.

Macro photography at night with a digital camera needs a bit of practice, this was the best I could manage. Although we continue to check, we haven't seen any more.

A composite panorama of photographs of the view south from the slopes of Shute Shelve Hill above Axbridge town.

The visual oddities of the composite make it look as though the scene is taken from within a valley but scrolling the full-sized image horizontally gives a much better impression of how one takes in the view.

To the left, round the hill from the allotments, lies Cheddar Gorge. Glastonbury Tor is just visible on the horizon to the right of the reservoir.

The Isle of Wedmore lies due South, the Isle of Frogs (aka Brent Knoll) is SW, beyond is the Bristol Channel.

The village of Cross lies at the foot of Cross Plain to the right.

The clouds were making attractive patterns of light and shade on Cross Plain slopes and I couldn't resist -- far more pleasant than the same scene in March.

The White Park cattle seem to be much more comfortable in the warmer weather - they do seem to huddle together when it's cold and wet. There are some calves in evidence and we look forward to meeting them up on the top of Wavering Down later in summer where they work on behalf of the National Trust by tromping down the bracken and maintaining the grassland.

We've begun to extend our daily walk to include the lower slopes of Shute Shelve Hill because it is prime time for the wildflowers. Yellow rock-roses predominate along with birdsfoot trefoil, centaury, milkwort, wild thyme, dropwort and St Johns wort.

Off to Charterhouse to try and spot fritillaries and to listen to skylarks. When we were last up at Charterhouse with Steve, we saw some fritillaries but weren't able to identify them, also I was feeling skylark-deprived --- we try to ensure that one day each summer, we take a light picnic and spend some time just listening to skylark song.

While we were there, we checked out the old smelting pond, now completely taken over by reeds and wildlife, there's a rather fine patch of water-lilies. I managed to get a shot of yellow-wort with its petals open - they seem only to open during the middle of the day, at all other times, they are just pointed buds. The flowering grasses can be very delicately pretty and there are Common Spotted and Bee orchids if you care to spend some time looking.

Fritillaries are often strong fliers and these were too busy to be photographed until they knocked off work at around six when it was clearly time for a bit of R&R and only then were we able to get some good close-ups.

They turned out to be Pearl-bordered Fritillaries, Ngaio used her mobile phone's camera to take a nice shot of one with its wings classically spread, an excellent illustration.

Sad to relate, the Pearl-bordered Fritillary is in rapid decline in the UK and, although once widespread, the species is now declared to be "highly threatened" in England and Wales.

We have a screw-on macro extension for the digital camera but it's only useful for slow-moving or immobile subjects who don't mind a lens being shoved in their face --- such as this caterpillar of the Six-spot Burnet moth, for instance.

Athought it has a very shallow depth of field, the extension does allows one to take quite intimate shots of the flora. This is a pyramidal orchid, one of several growing on the slopes of Shute Shelve Hill.