Perambulations on the Perimeter of .... SE21:Hymn From A Village.

The last walk in my Perambulations on the Perimeter series didn't end as happily as I'd hoped so, perhaps, that's the reason it's taken me so long to get round to doing another. Or, even more likely, it's just been a case of finding time. With the age of lockdowns fading into the distance, and the TADS, LbF, and Thames Path walks all up and running again, free Saturdays to do this kind of thing are becoming rarer and rarer.

 

But yesterday was one of those free Saturdays. I did consider just having a lazy day but with the March sun shining as bright as a summer's day it would have felt almost criminal not to get out and enjoy it. So that's what I did. Once I'd bought a copy of the Guardian, a bottle of water, and some Nurofen for my gout - which has now lasted nearly an entire month - I headed down to Firemans Alley on the edge of Dulwich Park.

About 95% of Dulwich Park is in SE21 so it seemed a good place to start. I stopped to take a photo of the Firemans Alley sign and a lady walking by thought I was pondering the use of a free bike that was propped up against the wall. I explained to her I was quite happy on foot and was just getting a photo of the sign and, on that, she suggested I might like to take another photo of a nearby cherry blossom tree.

Or magnolia - I struggle to tell the difference. Juxtaposed between two fairly brutal looking tower blocks and with a clear blue sky (that would remain ever present throughout the day) behind, how could I resist? I was already beginning to suspect that my perambulation around the perimeter of SE21 was going to be very photo heavy.

I entered into Dulwich Park (a place I've visited countless times over the last two and a half decades) and gently made my way past the play area, some art commissioned by the nearby Dulwich Picture Gallery by STIK (riffing on Murillo) and another piece by Thierry Noir (inspired by Tiepolo), and an ice cream van (I was sorely tempted but I wanted to have breakfast/brunch/lunch first - I'd only had a couple of slices of toast) and came to the cafe in the middle of the park.

It was doing a roaring trade and I was tempted by one of their tasty thinly sliced pizzas but it felt a bit early in the day for that. Which wasn't stopping others. The lake was looking resplendent in the sunshine and being enjoyed solely by the local waterfowl as there seemed to be some maintenance work going on with the pedalos. 

I resisted yet another ice cream van (I think I counted four in the park), admired the mock Tudor gatehouse - now converted into some kind of kindergarten, and left the park on to College Road where I would be able to enjoy, as I have so many times before, the architectural pleasures of Dulwich Village.

A village that really does feel like one - despite the P4 bus regularly shuttling through on its way to either Lewisham or Brixton. My first stop was Bell Cottage. That's the building on the cover of this blog and it's one of my favourites in London. Or, in fact, anywhere. It'd be a dream home and I think it's safe to say I'm hardly alone in thinking that. 

The slightly twee fingerposts outside the bustling Dulwich Picture Gallery (I think there's usually more people in the cafe than the actual galleries which are pleasant if a little overpriced) point the way but this is familiar terrain for me so I needed no help.

Dulwich Picture Gallery, the oldest public art gallery in England, was built by Sir John Soane (famous for the Bank of England) and opened in 1817 as part of Christ's Chapel of God's Gift. Itself part of the College of God's Gift, a historic charity founded by the Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn (played by Ben Affleck in Shakespeare in Love) whose name is everywhere in and around Dulwich Village (as you'll see if you read on).

The college, the war memorial, and the statue of Alleyn in full thespian mode all looked delightful on the sunny day and when you leave this ensemble, on to Gallery Road with Belair Park a little further down, you're not quite finished.

Next to the Village Orchard stands a picture perfect white chapel and further along branches of both The Real Greek and Pizza Express are painted in sympathetic colours. Across the road the huge Crown & Greyhound pub (a stop on my first Magnificent Seven graveyard walk back in 2019) looks both imposing and inviting.

Tempting though a beer was, as well as either a pizza or some Greek delights, I decided to soldier on. There would be other food and beer stops soon. The Crown and Greyhound, or The Dog as some locals know it, is both a Grade II listed building and classified by CAMRA as having a 'regionally important historic interior'.

It's got plenty of seating out the front and an even bigger garden to the rear and it's hosted such notable guests as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Marie Stopes, Stephen Spender, Ted Hughes, Alan Sillitoe, Harold Pinter, and Ivor Cutler. In recent years it's housed The Goose Is Out folk club but I always remember a very early visit, back in the nineties, with my parents not long after I'd moved to the area when there was a goat providing entertainment for the locals.

Past the Dulwich College Burial Ground, whose notables didn't include a single name familiar to me, and a parade of shops, I turned into Calton Avenue where I saw, certainly not for the last time of the day, a selection of Ukrainian flags. Reminding me how lucky I am to be able to walk my city in peace and comfort. For those living in Mariupol, Kyiv, Kharkiv, and many other Ukrainian cities that is, thanks to Putin's War - and Putin's war crimes, now impossible - and probably will be for a long time yet.

Calton Avenue climbs gently towards St Barnabas Church (built between 1892 and 1895 but looks newer) and views across the London skyline. There's a brief section along Townley Road before I turned left into East Dulwich Grove and had a quick appreciation of the almost Art Deco, or maybe Arts & Crafts, James Allen's Girl School (or JAGS) building.

East Dulwich Grove leads along a graceful, and well manicured - they've won awards, curve into Half Moon Lane. Strictly speaking, for a while, I was in SE24 but that is the nature of walking postcode perimeters. You can't follow them exactly unless you're prepared to walk through people's gardens and even solid walls.

Half Moon Lane is home to Gusto Italiano, a regular lockdown stop for me to buy cheese rolls and ciabattas for picnics in Brockwell Park, and I'd earmarked it for a takeaway but when I got there, and saw toasties on the menu, I decided to sit in. I had a Coke and a tasty, if too small, cheese toastie and had a go at the Guardian crossword as well as reading a Q&A with Carl Barat. Who was born in Basingstoke.

On leaving the deli, I saw the first of the day's decorated postboxes, more Ukrainian flags, and came to The Half Moon on Herne Hill. It's a good pub, I last visited with Shep on the way to the UXD in December, but I was still holding out.

Brockwell Park looked even more tempting in the sunshine but I was on a mission so I carried on along Norwood Road, past two craft ale bars, and turned right into Rosendale Road. A long straight road that passed the Peadbody building where my friends Dan and Misa used to live. I stopped in Jolly Good Food & Wine for a Mars ice cream and a packet of Bobby's Spirals and as the road rose higher and higher I was afforded magnificent views of the Crystal Palace transmitter.

Past All Saint's, West Dulwich, and a housing bloke named for many of your favourite birds (from cormorants to fulmars and falcons to dunnocks but I'd never heard of a maranada before!), I finally reached the Rosendale pub. I'd last been in many years ago, on a walk tracing the route of the mostly hidden Effra river, so it was good to be back.

I had a Brixton lager, charged my phone up, read the paper, and watched the world go by. It was pleasant but not enough to stay for a second. There was walking still to be done. Park Hall Road took me to The Alleyn's Head and, tempting though it looked, it was far too soon for another pit stop so I cut under the railway line on to Alleyn Park and, in front of me, the views of Dulwich College were absolutely outstanding.

Dulwich College has a long list of alumni that includes PG Wodehouse, CS Forester, Ernest Shackleton, Nigel Farage (a bully at school, unsurprisingly), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeremy Deller, Raymond Chandler, Dennis Wheatley, Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music, Chemical Brother Ed Simons, Adam Kay, Peter Lilley, Paul Sinha, CFA Voysey, and Bob Monkhouse (who was expelled for climbing the clock tower).

But, more than that, it's a beautiful building - or ensemble of buildings. Founded by Edward Alleyn, of course, in 1619 and painted by Camille Pissarro, who was living in Upper Norwood having fled the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870, the buildings we can see now were designed by Charles Barry Jr who also laid out nearby (I'd doubled back on myself, quite intentionally) Dulwich Park as well as Crystal Palace railway station and the Great Eastern hotel near Liverpool Street station.

You have to briefly walk along the A205/South Circular to get to the front of the college but it's worth it. I took some more photos of  the buildings bathed in the golden glow of the afternoon sunlight and carried along to the last remaining tollgate in the whole of London.

I'd like to think the little house to the side of it was once the tollmaster's lodgings but, even if it once was, these days there's a little booth where a, presumably often bored, man takes your money or swipes your card as you drive on through into the delights of Sydenham Hill.

It is quite nice actually. If you appreciate retro fonts you'll not be disappointed by Woodhall and if you like old churches you can admire the tall spire of St Stephen's. But if you like hills, you're in for a real treat because the footpath that leads from College Road to Crescent Hill Wood is both steep and quite long.

It gets steeper near the top too. For an extra challenge. You are, however, immediately rewarded with the sight of the Dulwich Wood House, a Young's pub with a large garden and one I've often wondered why me and my friends have not used more. I had a Camden Hell's and rested my legs in preparation for the final stretch of the day's walk.

Which began by going back down the footpath, about halfway, I'd just come up. Until I found a gate in to Dulwich Woods and Sydenham Hill Woods. It's almost impossible to work out which of which you're in. Even though I've been there, running, walking, and generally mucking about, many times before.

There are so many paths you're never quite sure which direction you're heading in and, this time, I never passed the ruined folly or the disused railway tunnel, but I did pass the pond and several dog walkers and I enjoyed the sun setting behind and through the trees, giving them a most auspicious aspect and allowing me to get some of my best snaps of the day.

I left the woods via Cox's Walk and came out, again, on the South Circular quite near where I'd first entered SE21. Now I left it, but it was a short walk home and I was in much earlier than I'd normally finish a walk. That didn't matter. It had been a lovely day and though I could never claim to enjoy these solo walks as much as those I take with friends I do find them much much better than sitting at home on my own and I always see something I've never seen before as well as something I have seen before but never really investigated properly. Looking forward to the next one but even more looking forward to returning to TADS duty on Saturday for a stroll from Didcot to Dorchester on Thames and back that I'm calling Wittenham Clumps.