A Weekend Wandering in South East London

Just as I was beginning to adjust to Autumn being upon us, and contemplate breaking my self imposed rule of no opaque tights or boots before October, the weather takes a turn for the better and we are back to sunshine and warm blue skies.  All very welcome don’t you agree?

This weekend I took a trip over to Dulwich in South East London.  Not an area of London I know very well, but in the spirit of the excellent book ‘Ways to walk in London’ by Alice Stevenson I have been reading lately, I decided to go for a wander.  I did have a purpose in mind however as I wanted to visit ‘Sargent The Watercolours’ , the exhibition currently running at the very beautiful Dulwich Picture Gallery.  The exhibition was lovely, soft washes of colour, gentle light,  almost an early 1900’s travel brochure for Southern Europe with so many beautiful, peaceful, pictures of Italy and Spain.

Dulwich Books, an independent bookshop in West Dulwich, has been on my list of bookshops to visit for some time nows so it was great to have time for some proper book browsing whilst I was there. Village books in Dulwich Village was another great find.  Both bookshops were friendly, welcoming, and full of interesting titles. In addition, they  both have a great programme of autumn author events.  I’ll definitely hope to go back to catch one or two of these.

Summer usually sees a lull in my cinema trips, so it was good to get back into the swing with ‘Victoria and Abdul’.  A touching and tender film. Can anyone play Queen Victoria better than Judy Dench? I suspect not.   I watched it at The Curzon Mondrian on the South Bank.  This small cinema is in the basement of the super stylish Sea Containers building on the South bank.  With bars and the opportunity to order food and drink to enjoy with the film it felt like a very exclusive and  civilised treat, but was no more expensive than any other London cinema!

Dulwich was full of interesting finds and absolutely worth the tube + overground train to get there.