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ONE of the benefits of France as a holiday destination is its proximity. It also supports a marvellous, varied wildlife - representing the north western corner of the European land mass which, including Asia and Africa, constitutes the largest block of land on the planet since the time of the dinosaurs and the super continents Gondwanaland and Pangaea.

The little group of islands that make up Britain were isolated from this immense land mass during the relatively recent geological past, perhaps less than 10,000 years ago, before rising sea levels opened up the English Channel.

This separation occurred before a number of southerly species had travelled far enough north to allow them to cross to Britain before the inundation of the dry plain of woodlands and grasslands destined to become the bed of the Channel.

Because France is part of the continental land mass it shares with its European and Asian neighbours some common fauna and flora that never reached our shores and, therefore, are not included in the list of native British species.

However, each year, millions of birds migrate backwards and forwards across the continents and the English Channel using Britain as a resting place, somewhere to feed and also somewhere to breed the next generation.

Butterflies moths and dragonflies cross the Channel too - in varying numbers. And, just before we set off on our annual trip to Brittany recently we saw four clouded yellow butterflies - in Hemel Hempstead.

In Gadebridge Park, on a patch of grass outside the Civic Centre and in our garden. If the weather here and in northern France had not been so cold and wet and the winds not blowing so consistently from the north, this little vanguard of these unusual insects might well have turned into a full scale invasion.

One butterfly I look for when I go to France is the European Swallowtail butterfly. Among the largest of the European butterfly species, it is represented, in the form of a variety of sub-species, all the way from France to China - and a very few select nature reserves in England where it has developed, over thousands of years, into a distinct sub species known as the British Swallowtail Butterfly.

It is extremely rare and found only in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and The Broadlands. It is subtlely different from its continental cousins in markings, colouration and more importantly a peculiarly British ability displayed by the pupae to withstand long periods under water when the wetland/fenland habitat it prefers becomes flooded in winter. It has certainly had plenty of practice this year.

I've written several times about Brittany. I find it a fascinating region.

Britain, particularly the west country, and Brittany share a Celtic heritage going back 2000 to 3000 years and more and there's also a certain similarity in the weather. Some beautiful warm sunny days, but also rain clouds sweeping in from the Atlantic to blanket the sky.

Being further south, summers in Brittany are naturally warmer, although winters can be bleak, wet and windy with huge, dramatic Atlantic seas smashing onto the coast after an unbroken 'fetch' of 3000 thousand miles of open ocean.

Conditions that have terrified sailors for centuries, yet have created miles of splendid sandy beaches backed by wildlife-rich dunes.

These sand barriers, topped by carpets of tough marram grass, the long fibrous roots of which help to bind the sand together, often protect wetland nature reserves. Such places have survived agricultural development because of the constant incursion of drifts of fine salt-laden sand that discourages the growing of most food crops yet, paradoxically, provides a home for a wonderful selection of plants, insects, animals and birds adapted by time and natural selection to cope with the demands of a sandy salty environment - a virtual desert of low fertility dotted with acidic ponds and lakes where rare plants and dragonflies thrive and frogs and Natterjack toads come to breed.

In the contrasting lime-rich habitats where shell fragments have formed isolated pockets of high alkalinity and created fertile oasis in the sand among the infertile sand dunes, beautiful orchids and cranesbills bloom in profusion and plants of the onion family and marsh mallow carpet the ground.

It is over such dune habitats than many people walk on their way to and fro the beaches and miss the pleasures of some of the most varied and productive landscapes in Europe, especially for the butterflies and moths that throng the many flowering plants like thrift and sea lavender, which grow in clumps on the surface of the sand to conserve moisture and hold fertility.

In time these plants and the marram grass will consolidate the dunes and create a firmer sandy soil that can withstand the erosive effect of wind and human feet. This new habitat is even richer in butterflies and glorious songbirds like linnets, which sing from the brilliant yellow broom bushes. This is the place to look for swallowtail butterflies and this year, despite the generally dull weather, this is where I found them.

Their large compound eyes allow for superb all round vision and the ability to react to any movement, however small, that they may perceive as a danger. They are preyed on by some birds and spiders, although their colouration of black and yellow advertises the fact that they are distasteful and should be avoided.

Nevertheless they are wary of any approach and it requires patience and good luck in equal measure to get close enough to take a photograph - with the pendulum swinging in the direction of luck just a fraction more than I would care to admit.

Having explored the coastal fringe we drove back across central Brittany over the high ground of the Monts d'Arree - the stumps of an eroded mountain chain that once thrust up into the centre of this region and across northern France during one of the many mountain building phases that occurred 50 million years or so ago.

The mountains are no more, but the remnants rise and fall in rolling hills dominated by rocky hilltops and plateaux lakes not unlike Dartmoor in texture, and with a primitive wildness that has inspired and impressed humanity from times past - as can be seen from the many cairns and stone monuments erected by successive cultures over a period scanning five millennia.

This is bird of prey country. Common buzzards rotate in the rising air on the lookout for rabbits and carrion. The buzzards can be seen all year and are joined in spring and autumn by the occasional black kite on passage.

I'm not one for tourist spots generally speaking, but there are exceptions to every rule and to my mind the Abbey at Le Mont St Michael is one of them

It is always full of visitors from all over the world.

What excites me most, of course, is the surrounding ten square miles or so of salt-marsh where sheep graze in their thousands.

After climbing up to the top of the Abbey mound, I persuaded the others in the party to make a detour along the sea wall that guards the salt marsh.

By chance we stopped near an ancient drover's track that ran, straight as an arrow, to the Mont in the hazy distance. One of the shepherds was calling in his flock and if I understood him correctly (which is not without some doubt) his flock consisted of more than a thousand sheep of the special breed indigenous to the salt-marsh.

They have created a short flowery turf among which flocks of starlings probe for insects and my eye was drawn to a peregrine falcon 'stooping' into the starlings, seemingly just for fun, as it repeated its dive several times - much to the consternation of the starlings.