Our verdict
Blackdown wildness in miniature. The plateau commons are the hills' secret habitat and this surviving scrap shows why they matter — small, scruffy in the best way, and two minutes from a good pub.
A corner of wooded common at Churchinford on the high Blackdown plateau — birch, willow scrub and damp grassland of the sort these hills once had everywhere, alive with butterflies on a warm day.
Woodland Trust common on the Blackdown plateau, open at all times.