The Lea Valley Walk: Leagrave to the heart of London
By Leigh Hatts
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About this ebook
Guidebook to the Lea Valley Walk, a 53-mile long-distance path from Luton to the Thames. It follows the River Lea from its source near Leagrave to East India Dock opposite Greenwich, with an alternative finish at Limehouse and an optional tour of the Olympic Park. On the way it passes through a blend of quiet countryside, nature reserves and urban landscapes. The Lea Valley Walk offers level, waymarked walking for all abilities. The complete trek is presented in nine stages, accompanied by clear OS mapping, with suggestions for three, four, five and six day itineraries. For those looking for an easy-to-access traffic-free day or half-day walk, the route is divided into sections with convenient railway stations close to each end. Tracing the river as it passes through Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire towards the bustle of London, this fine and varied walk takes in historical towns and villages, stately homes and castles, including Waltham Abbey and Hertford Castle, Luton Hoo, Brocket Park and Hatfield. Along with suggestions for refreshment stops and accommodation, the guidebook is packed with fascinating snippets of information about wildlife, landscape, history and industrial heritage, making it an ideal companion to exploring the river and its surroundings.
Leigh Hatts
Leigh Hatts has been walking the Thames towpath and exploring the river and Docklands since 1981, when he worked on the Thames Walk Feasibility Study – which resulted in the Countryside Commission persuading the government to designate the 180-mile route as a national trail. In addition to writing three Thames books, Leigh spent a decade as author of the London Transport Walks Book series. He also devised the 20-mile Bournemouth Coast Path, which now links the South West Coast Path to the Solent Way to create a 652-mile coast route from Minehead to Emsworth. In addition to a guide to this route, he has written walking books featuring Dorset's coast and countryside and the New Forest. Leigh has also worked as a reporter for the walkers' magazine TGO .
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The Lea Valley Walk - Leigh Hatts
INTRODUCTION
Maltings at Hertford (Section 4)
The Lee Valley Regional Park, Britain’s first regional park when established by Act of Parliament in 1967, stretches from Ware in Hertfordshire to the River Thames in London. The pre-World War Two regional park idea was included in the 1944 Greater London Plan by Professor Patrick Abercrombie, who suggested that ‘Every piece of open land should be welded into a great regional reservation...a playground for Londoners’. He added: ‘These open areas are a great recreational and open air lung to the crowded East End; their preservation is essential.’
Twenty years later the Civic Trust reported that ‘the valley is London’s kitchen garden, its well, its privy and its workshop and is treated as London’s backyard because it lies at everybody’s boundary’. The Trust concluded that the river ‘could again give delight as a place of leisure and recreation’ and be ‘a green lung’.
The 10,000 acre park, partly funded by a levy on London council tax bills, has become a unique blend of countryside, nature reserves, urban green spaces, heritage sites and sports facilities, while also embracing more water than the Norfolk Broads. Boris Johnson has called it ‘London’s Lake District’. For the Prince of Wales it is ‘a classic example of what could be done with derelict land if impetus and determination was there’.
The ArcelorMittal Orbit tower in the Olympic Park
Since the London Olympic Games, in 2012, the Lea Valley will forever be the Olympic valley, with lasting reminders and benefits: the Lea Valley Walk can now be called ‘the Olympic exercise route’, full of heritage, wildlife and opportunity. Luton was declared an ‘Olympic City’ by virtue of being a main gateway to the Games because of its airport. Halfway down the valley, just before Greater London and alongside historic Waltham Abbey, is the Olympic White Water Centre. The south of the area focuses around the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which is featured in a stand-alone circular day walk described at the end of this guide.
The River Lea, which rises at Leagrave in Bedfordshire, is 58 miles (98km) long. The first Act of Parliament to improve navigation was passed in 1424, and 27 miles (43km) of the river below Hertford were canalised from 1767 by engineer John Smeaton. Occasionally the navigation leaves the river to follow Smeaton’s new channels, so there can often be meandering stretches of the Old River Lea flowing nearby. Most of the canal falls within the Lee Valley Regional Park.
Lea Valley Walk
Enfield waterside (Section 6)
The Upper Lea Valley Group was formed in 1971 when the Harpenden Society expressed concern over the state of the riverside at Batford. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Hertfordshire, from about 1966 the idea of a ‘through walk’ down the valley within the county had already formed. In Bedfordshire, during 1972, Luton Council developed a riverside route from Leagrave Marsh to the town’s edge. The idea of the Lea Valley Walk from Leagrave to the start of the Lee Valley Regional Park at Ware was born at the Upper Lea Valley Group annual public meeting the following year. By 1978 South Bedfordshire Ramblers initiated a link to the Bedfordshire–Hertfordshire boundary at East Hyde. The same year the Welwyn and Hatfield Upper Lea Valley Group volunteers built the waterside entry into Stanborough Park.
The first Lea Valley Walk section falling within the Borough of Luton was opened in May 1981. The entire Bedfordshire section, including Luton, was officially opened in October 1989 when Nicholas Phillips of Luton Hoo was invited to perform the ceremony in Luton’s Wardown Park: this formed the final link in the Walk, as from Ware there was already a towpath running all the way to London. Once the waymarking from north to south was completed, in 1993, there was an official opening of the complete Leagrave to London route.
Canary Wharf just visible above the trees near Spring Hill (Section 8)
The route has continued to evolve over the years (and since the first edition of this guide in 2001). In order to stay close to the water and away from a main road there has been a return to the original Luton exit by way of the approach to Luton Hoo before Luton Parkway. From here there is now no engagement with the airport, thanks to a new path shared with the National Cycle Network Route 6. In the south, immediately beyond the Olympic Park, it is now possible to avoid the dangerous Bow Roundabout under the flyover by staying by the water as it flows beneath the dangerous junction.
A new bridge at Cody Dock in the tidal Bow Creek allows for the route’s climax to be, as originally intended, at East India Dock rather than Limehouse Basin, which remains an alternative (Section 9A in this guide) for those wanting to stay with the navigation channel. The 9 main sections of the Walk as described here make up 53½ miles (85.5km) of pleasant, waymarked walking from Bedfordshire to the Thames.
LEA OR LEE?
There are at least 25 different spellings for the river’s name. In addition to Lee and Lea past documents record ‘lay’, ‘ley’, ‘leye’, ‘lyge’ and even ‘lyzan’. The spelling in 1520 appears to have been Lee but in the 19th century the Ordnance Survey decided to use both Lee and Lea. In the 20th century the valley and its river were called Lea in the upper reaches of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire and Lee further south. The park authority covering the last 26 miles (41km) is called the Lee Valley Regional Park. However, since the 2012 Olympic Games was held in the valley it has become normal to use the spelling Lea. This has been adopted for the latest guide except where an official name retains the alternative.
History of the valley
Waltham Abbey (Section 6)
The Lea Valley, once the boundary between the land ruled by Alfred the Great to the south and Danelaw to the north, has been the setting for many landmark events in England’s history. Christian culture emerged from Hertford in 673 when the first national church synod united the Celtic and new Roman Christian traditions. King Harold came to Waltham Abbey in 1066 prior to the Battle of Hastings and his subsequent burial there marked the end of the Saxon era and the beginning of the new Norman dynasty.
The traumatic Reformation arguably began at Waltham Abbey, where the future Archbishop Cranmer first suggested to unhappily married Henry VIII that to obtain his desired divorce he might look to the verdict of theologians at home rather than the slow-moving ecclesiastical courts answerable to Rome.
Another dramatic change of dynasty came in 1603 when the Tudor line gave way to the Scottish Stuarts. James VI of Scotland entered London by way of the Lea Valley, pausing near Cheshunt to form his English government. He also brought golf, which now flourishes in the valley.
Queen Victoria’s influential first Prime Minister Lord Melbourne grew up, lived and worked alongside the River Lea at Brocket Park. Later the Queen’s least favourite premier, Palmerston, inherited the same house. Her very last was Lord Salisbury, who lived at Hatfield. Balfour, an early 20th-century Prime Minister, began his education at Hoddesdon near Broxbourne.
Heritage
River Beane joins the Lea (Section 5)
English architectural heritage is well represented in the Lea Valley. Early brick mansions are to be found near the source in Bedfordshire, at Hatfield in Hertfordshire and in the riverside London village of Homerton. Stately homes such as Luton Hoo and Brocket Park have enhanced the river by creating great lakes as a backdrop to varied styles of building visited by royalty and other famous figures. There are also castles, ancient pubs and, at Ware, the unique gazebos. Rye House near Hoddesdon is a fine example of early English brickwork. Above all there are many churches, from Saxon foundations and the ancient Norman Waltham Abbey to the unusual 19th-century brick building at East Hyde.
The valley has also inspired generations of writers. Here three great hymn writers, including William Cowper, composed now-famous hymns. Authors such as Anthony Trollope and Beatrix Potter also found inspiration here. Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler is a tribute to the River Lea, which his contemporary John Stow described as ‘a pleasant and useful river’.
Up and down the valley
Moored barge on King's Meads (Section 5)
Walking the Lea Valley Walk one comes across recurring names. Lord