Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Dulwich

It's a short ride to Dulwich from Herne Hill and so a good choice for a rare blue-sky day in London. I am in my element setting off to go somewhere I have never been before with no idea what to expect. The buzz I get from this is probably to blame for me being unable to settle in one place for long. Its like an addiction I have.

My destination, the Dulwich Gallery, is easy to find but the sign saying Dulwich Village tempts me with promises of cafes, and the reality does not fail to satisfy. This is my sort of place, a tiny shopping street with lots of trees and not much traffic and some interesting little shops including a branch of Gail's Artisan Bakery, which I discovered near Clapham yesterday.

About Gail's, there are some recipes on their website, and they have a book out that looks great too. Check out some of the breads available, all made with sourdough starters.

Here's a nice place for sale in the area - is that a misprint, or are there meant to be that many zeros? In a suburb that doesn't even seem to have a mobile signal?



Back to the gallery. Nearby is one of the oldest buildings in Dulwich, the original Dulwich College for Boys.




I give the Dulwich Picture Gallery 3 out of 5. They promote their app which is meant to provide information about individual works. They say you can point your camera at any painting and the app will recognise it. I tried 3 times to download the app and it timed out each time. I asked at the ticket office was their WiFi network working, and the staff said they didn't know. Not good enough.

I got my lefts and rights mixed up again and rode up to Crystal Palace when I really wanted to go to the Horniman Museum.
School holidays, what was I thinking? The Horniman when I got there was unbelievably noisy and also smelly and hot. Turns out I wasn't in any mood to look at natural history. I guess I just tick off that one. Though I was very impressed by a taxidermy box of 112 hummingbirds. So tiny and so iridescent. And the conservatory is a lovely building - apparently Horniman ordered it from a catalogue from a Glasgow company.


There are views of the city from the gardens.



Cycling is such a pleasant way to explore and to feed my addiction. 

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