Walking London’s unsung waterway: the River Lea rises again

03.04.2024 - 12:31 / theguardian.com

For centuries the Lea has been a vital artery for London, carrying drinking water and grain into the city and servicing the factories and gunpowder mills that grew up along its banks. Rising in Bedfordshire, it flows for 46 miles through Hertfordshire and north-east London, eventually reaching the Thames. It’s often described as London’s second river, but this unsung tributary gets little of the glory or recognition of the Thames.

Since moving to Leyton (“settlement on the Lea”) several years ago, I’ve become familiar with the stretches alongside Hackney Marshes, but I found myself increasingly curious about what lay upriver. The Lee Valley park runs along a 26-mile stretch of the Lea. This scenic 4,000-hectare (10,000-acre) reinvention of former rubbish dumps, sewage works, gravel pits and factories was constituted nearly 60 years ago as a “green lung” for the city, and extended in 2012 to include the new Olympic Park. I decide to hike its length in an attempt to gain a fresh perspective on my part of outer London.

On an unseasonably warm February morning, my boyfriend Colin and I stand outside Ware station in Hertfordshire. The plan is to hike along its watercourses over two days down to Essex and north-east London, winding up at its endpoint, East India Docks. After a scoot around Ware’s historic streets, we find ourselves on the grassy bank, where the linear park starts. Our first leg is an easy six miles along the main canalised section, called the Lee Navigation. The Lea’s history is one of centuries-long alterations to make it more navigable, while the differing spellings refer to the natural (River Lea) and human-made (Lee).

As geese honk away, we follow the towpath lined by canalboats with names including Common People and Even Keel, skeletal trees reflected in the water. The sun casts impressive shadows under a succession of bridges as we pass locks and solo fishers, before reaching atmospheric Amwell nature reserve, home to wintering wildfowl.

An unpleasant whiff soon assaults our noses: “We were in the lungs,” quips Colin, “now we’re in the intestines.” He’s not wrong: a quick look at the map suggests a pongy waste management facility beyond the railings, so our pace quickens until we reach the picturesque Dobbs Weir. After negotiating a trickier section of path, we’re up on the raised banks of the New River canal, another of the Lea’s navigations, on a route down to Broxbourne village, our lunch stop. Here we pause at a shrine to a young Arsenal fan, the first of several touching tributes along the way to lives lost.

Just past Lee Valley Boat Centre is The Crown, popular with day trippers, where we scoff fish finger sarnies before rejoining the Lee Navigation for the seven-mile trek down