Thursday, May 9, 2013

Finding Roald Dahl near London

In this post - on the trail of one of the greatest children's authors of all time

If you're a fan of Roald Dahl, you can make an easy day trip to his hometown near London.

Book a train from London to Aylesbury, making sure it goes through Great Missenden.

Leave London in the morning (we took at 10:00 train which got us to Aylesbury before 11).  From there, walk to the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery, taking you on a nice stroll through this quaint village.

The gallery is actually part of the County Museum.  The kids enjoyed how hands on the exhibits were.  Mostly they have taken fun things from the stories and created activities:  crawl inside James' giant peach, travel in a glass elevator, make yourself invisible on a screen, create a shadow freeze reflection of yourself.

http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/bcc/museum/dahl_gallery/dahl_childrens_gallery.page

the squares that look round

having a taste of the Giant Peach

The gallery from outside
The gallery is not huge - you might find an hour is plenty for a visit.  The County museum is also worth exploring, for a historical perspective on the area.

Then we took the train heading back towards London, but we descended at Great Missenden.  Roald Dahl's widow still lives in his home outside this small village.  We found a lovely park in the city.  The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre focuses a bit more on his life and his writing, compared to the Children's Gallery in Aylesbury, where the focus is on the scenes and funny aspects of his books.

http://www.roalddahlmuseum.org/


This is apparently how he wrote all of his books - in a chair like this one - in a shed near his house
The kids liked both stops - neither one is too overwhelming or super multi-media.  These are good, simple educational exhibits.  You can practice writing your own stories at the Story Centre.  There are frequent story readings throughout the day. 

In Great Missenden, we stumbled across a lovely little candy store:



And found the fantastic city park:

And we were back in London for dinner!!