Up the wall

The street art that popped up last summer, thanks to the Dulwich Picture Gallery, makes a great neighbourhood tour when people come to stay.

Stik on Hansler Road inspired by Unknown
Couple in a Landscape by Gainsborough

CEPT at the entrance to the newbuild on Bawdale
Road being covered by Grand Designs 

Take the other weekend, when my sister Moira was visiting from Aberdeenshire, with her partner Andy and nine-year-old daughter, Sula. As is the way with my family, the occasion brought on a family get-together of some considerable size, and widely varying ages. A tall order, to please everyone, but I was able to drum up a day of outdoor art and activity, without straying so much as a metre out of SE22. First up, the local murals and we kicked off with a few of the smaller ones, on Blackwater Street, moving on to Nunca's enormous Queen Bee by The Plough, more Stik opposite Push Studios, the fabulous Phlegm horn-player on Goodrich Road, the Discreet owl on Bawdale Road and Christian Nagel's mushroom atop Mrs Robinson on Lordship Lane. Prize spot, on the pavement outside the painted house on Lordship Lane was a Ben Wilson piece of illustrated chewing gum.

The 'tour group' on Blackwater Street, where a Stik piece
was recently nicked off the wall

Olivia and the Queen Bee

Hannah and the Stik family based on
The Guardian Angel by Marcantonio Franceschini

The kids with Phlegm's horn-player

Discreet's owl fascinates

One of Christiaan Nagel's mushrooms

Ben Wilson's zesty gum art

After a break for lunch we then took off to Dulwich Park, to hire recumbent bikes. Talk about Whacky Races. With such stunning autumn sunshine, blue skies sprayed with streaks of white, and the world and his wife out strolling in the last couple of hours of daylight, it's astonishing that none of our crazy bikers took the legs out from under some unsuspecting pensioner.

Moira about to take her daughter out for pole position

Rory and Lottie clearing the path of passers-by

The grown-ups were much more sedate – or on hand to pick up any casualties – me meandering gently and cousin Matt and his wife Zoe touring on a tandem.

Cate polices the Whacky Racers

A bicycle made for Matt and Zoe

Country matters

Living in SE22 we’re very close to the Kent countryside. The other Sunday I went with a group of friends for a walk in the glorious autumn sunshine. We were Howard, Kerry, Steve, Veronica and Trish, together with Trish’s dog-on-loan Maude.

Maude the dog is all ears

We chose a walk from one of the Pathfinder book, a great source of inspiration for Londoners who happen to be outdoor types. Our route took in the villages of Cudham and Downe, where Charles Darwin lived (his house is now owned by the National Trust and open to the public) and the network of meandering paths and bridleways in-between. Eight miles in all.

Five go trad in Cuckoo Wood 

So, just 45 minutes in the car out of East Dulwich, we found ourselves at the starting point of our walk, High Elms Country Park, a few miles south of Bromley and buzzing with welly-booted Sunday dog-walkers. The park was once a big country estate and the first part of our walk was through sun-dappled Cuckoo Wood. Kicking through the autumn leaves, Howard (or Nature Boy, as I call him), brought our attention to the abundance of sweet chestnuts, ready to roast and eat. Pockets were duly stuffed.

Nature Boy sweet on a chestnut

We followed on along tree-lined ‘lanes’, the centuries-old paths that were once the only way to walk between settlements, farms and remote houses. Emerging into high open fields we looked back and could see the towers of Canary Wharf in the distance. Next, we encountered a group of fluffy and friendly ponies, eager to get their noses into our packed lunches.

Ponies getting pally

In the village of Cudham we stopped by the 12th century church and spent some time admiring two immense yew trees in the churchyard, said to be over a thousand years old. One of the trunks was two metres wide and hollowed out inside. The yew is a symbol of everlasting life, which is why they’re often found in graveyards.

Awe-inspiring 1000-year-old yew

A little further on, in some spooky woods, we found a lonely teddy bear, left behind by his picnicking pals, and then more foraging fare in the shape of greengages ripening in the low autumn sun.

Teddy bear, desperately seeking picnic

Greengage plums soaking up the sunshine

We skirted alongside Darwin’s house but instead of popping in we made straight for the George & Dragon, where the pub’s ales and homemade pumpkin soup went down a treat. A few of us had brought our own grub, though, and as it was turning a bit chilly outside we headed to St Mary the Virgin’s church opposite the pub, where the 13th century porch provided the perfect picnic spot.

Our lunch venue, St Mary’s in Downe

Home-baked goodies were passed around – Yorkshire parkin by Trish and brownies by Kerry. I’ll come walking with this lot again, I thought… We finished the day on a humorous high, clowning around with this brilliant road sign.

You can take the girl out of primary school…

Print works

The Hockney prints are on till 11 May and as near to a perfect hour or two of Englishness as you'll find, despite a fair few being made in the USA. My favourites were a series of colour prints, made when the artist was still living in Bradford.

Self-portrait, made in Yorkshire

I also loved Hockney's Rake's Progress, which covers the young artist's arrival in New York, the things he sees, his impressions of the place… This was in the Sixties, more than 40 years ahead of Grayson Perry's version. 

Chorus line

The Southbank hosted a festival of choirs at the weekend. The air was filled with harmony and everywhere you looked there was a line-up of singers sending out the message that making music together is one of the most joyous ways of connecting with your fellow humans. The choir I've been singing with since 2004, the London Bulgarian Choir, was invited to participate with a half-hour slot in the prestigious Purcell Room.

The cummerbund crew

Our mums-to-be – last gig before B-day

Our clashing otherworldly chords and vibrant trills and hiccups have been surprising and mesmerising audiences in equal measure for 14 years now. Sunday's select group of spectators settled down for a sample of our highlights, though on stage the acoustic was frighteningly dead, with one side of our curve unable to hear the other. From the audience's perspective, we were later told, it sounded brilliant, so I guess that's all that matters.

Water under the bridge

Friends Nick, Rachel and their daughter Martha have recently moved from Highbury in London to East Peckham in Kent. We're looking forward to days out in the countryside with National Trust stately home and bracing walk opportunities galore in their neck of the woods. However, we may have to wait until things get a little less soggy. On our first visit to their new home, right in the heart of oasthouse country, we took off after lunch to a Country Park nearby. Every path we chose seemed to end in a lake that hadn't been there before.

Nick: anyone got a canoe?

We tramped our muddy way around a once small, but now vastly expanded, lake where signs peeped out above the new waterline. The local wildlife seemed very happy with this new version of the world. As was young Martha, in her dinky wellington boots.

Lovely for ducks

End of the pier

Martha mesmerised by mud

Evening arrived, washing the sky in pastel shades of pink and blue, the setting sun brushed the tops of the trees with a rusty haze and geese flew in formation up above us. Despite the number of people out in the park, walking dogs, and children, it was a peaceful winter evening scene.

The serene hour before sunset

Last few one-two-three-weeees

Winter dusk

A river runs through it

I'm claiming the River Thames for south east London. Or at least half of it. I'm also suggesting that the river cruise my friend Karin booked, one bright sunny Saturday, was a south east London experience. We'll forget about boarding at Tower Hill, simply a means to an end, because once on board, the riverside revelations from the crew were all 'sarf' as they come.
The great thing about doing these things in winter is that you invariably have the deck to yourself. We were the only ones to brave the open top – hoods up and mittens on – with everyone else huddled down below.

Ghost ship

Living on the south side one crosses the river hundreds of times every year and thinks nothing much of it generally. But there is something exhilarating about travelling under one of London's bridges. Tower Bridge is the most interesting and its underside is almost as intricately wrought as the suspension cables above. Passing under another bridge, the crew commentary pointed out the full length windows in its side walls revealing individual spa rooms with women in fluffy towelling robes reclining in post-treatment bliss.

Under Tower Bridge

We cruised east and Canary Wharf loomed up ahead, its plate-glass towers glinting in the sunshine. The glare of the sun was magnified by the water and I ended the day with a touch of bright-weather blindness, I'm sure. 
We hopped off in Greenwich and toured some of its naval landmarks, from the Old Naval College, now a music conservatoire, to the Trafalgar Tavern, like something out of Venice with the water lapping at its walls.

Gate to the Old Naval College

Nelson's local

It was too lovely a day not to turn inland and take a tour of Greenwich Park, up to one of its hills for my favourite panorama. Everything was looking incredibly sharp in this weather – the Observatory, the house designed and lived in by Sir John Vanbrugh in 1719 (just outside the park walls). Trees become see-through and their branches spindly, like bony fingers reaching out to frame a view.

Karin contemplates the view east

Vanbrugh's house

The Royal Observatory

We hopped aboard again for the trip back to SW1. The brick and timber of the riverside terraces were gleaming golds and rich browns in the evening sun and from the river the Shard looked every inch iconic enough for a world-class city like London. But it is in SE1. And I'm claiming it for south east London.

The riverside as it might once have looked

And we're back at Tower Bridge

River view of Shard