London’s successful bid to host the 2012 Olympics will transform the east end around Stratford. Over the next seven years, what is now a gently decaying scene of abandoned rivers and rusting factories will be redeveloped as the Olympic Stadium and Village, sports arenas and an acquatic centre, all set in 500 acres of landscaped parkland.

So now is your chance to explore a part of London’s industrial landscape which will vanish for ever when the bulldozers move in. This is a river walk which takes you through the network of unused waterways at the heart of the planned Olympic zone, along overgrown towpaths, past pumping stations and sewage pipes taking London’s waste out of the city, before returning to the Thames along the Regent’s Canal.

Highlights

Limehouse Basin
Bow Locks and Three Mills
Bow Back Rivers
River Lea
Hertford Union Canal
Regent’s Canal

Distance: 7.5 miles

Time: 3 hours approx

Type: circular

Underfoot: mostly towpaths, some overgrown.

Start and end: Limehouse station. Trains from Fenchurch Street; Docklands Light Railway from Tower Gateway, Bank, Canary Wharf and Lewisham.

Turn right out of Limehouse Station and take the first right down Tunnel Approach. This leads to the Limehouse Link, famously the most expensive section of road ever built at nearly £300 million for a 1.5 kilometre stretch of road. Continue straight on down Branch Road rather than following cars onto the Link, swing left into Horseferry Road and down into Narrow Street.

Cross the Limehouse Basin and turn left at a sign to the Limehouse Cut through Limehouse Basin. (A quick detour straight on along Narrow Street brings you to well-preserved terraces of Georgian houses and The Grapes, a popular riverside pub.

Twenty years ago, Limehouse Basin was abandoned as industries deserted London’s Docklands, and the area was left overshadowed by Victorian railway arches and lined with derelict warehouses. Now it is surrounded by luxury flats and the marina is full of boats, a classic example of docklands regeneration.

Pick up the well-signed towpath to the Limehouse Cut.

The Cut was built in the mid-eighteenth century as a short cut for freight boats coming down the River Lea from Hertfordshire to the Thames so that they did not have to take the long loop round the Isle of Dogs and wait for the tide to turn in their favour. The two mile walk from Limehouse Basin to Bow Locks at the entry to the river Lea is peaceful and easy, through an increasingly industrial landscape of warehouses, builders’ yards and rusting gas holders. Thanks to a recently installed floating pontoon designed by British Waterways, you no longer have to surface and brave the busy Blackwall Tunnel Approach road.

Leave the Cut and cross the high curving bridge across Bow Locks.

Stop at the top of the recently restored bridge to look back over to the towers of Canary Wharf and forward to the tangle of roads, railways and overhead cables around Bow and Stratford. This marks the southernmost point of the planned Olympic development and the beginning of the Bow Backs, a network of natural rivers and manmade flood channels which converge at Bow Locks. Boats used to carry timber, copper, coal and agricultural products down to the Thames but now the river Lea here is almost empty.

An obvious path leads ahead to Three Mills, one of what were once many mills along the River Lea. Three Mills was once used to distil grain for alchohol and only stopped in 1941 because of a shortage of grain. Restoration of the Mills started in 1989 and there is a small exhibition with information panels plus a welcome (if limited) selection of sandwiches and drinks in House Mill. Part of the complex is now a film and television studios.

Walk through the complex and bear left past a blue metal bridge to a towpath ahead with colourful narrowboats moored on the left (opposite) bank. Look right and you’ll get a good view of one of London’s most startling sites – Abbey Mills Pumping Station with its red and green Moorish domes. Built in 1863 as part of London’s then new sewage system, it was nicknamed the Cathedral of Sewage.

Continue straight along the towpath along Three Mills River to Stratford. This riverside hotchpotch of council houses, tower blocks and rundown factories will be at the centre of Olympic regeneration. Cross over at the pedestrian lights to the right, turn left on the opposite side and pick up the towpath signed City Mill River. Looking back the way you have just come from here, you can just see the distinctive spikes of the Millennium Dome, finally given a use as the proposed Olympic basketball and gymnastics hall after lying empty for five years. The Olympic Village will be to your right on former railway land just west of Stratford.

The river here immediately has a more abandoned and secret feel. The deserted towpaths are overgrown and narrow and the water is so silted up with reeds and weeds that it is almost solid. Concrete walls are crumbling and rosebay willowherb is rampant. There is a smell of wild garlic. Boats lie half-submerged in water, choked with weed. Ahead is a clutter of derelict factories, railway lines and pylons. Look up to spot a metal sculpture of a row of metal men spanning the first bridge you come to. This marks the Greenway, a long footpath carving through East London right above the Northern Outfall Sewer taking waste out of London. This is London’s industrial past at its most raw.

Emerge at Marshgate Lane. All the industries here will be swept away for the Olympics and and businesses have started negotiating compensation and relocation with the London Development Agency, which is responsible for the development of the Olympic sites. Cross the road, go down the steps and cross the footbridge by a Old River Lea sign. Before you start along the path look to your left. In seven years’ time, the factories and builders’ yards here will be replaced by the Olympic Stadium.

Cross the hump-backed bridge ahead, still ridged to provide a grip for barge horses as they walked across pulling barges by rope. Ignore the path to the left and carry straight on along the path, up the steps and across the footbridge to Old Ford Lock, wide and well-used and a huge contrast with the Bow Backs. You are now on the River Lea. On your right is a bizarre overgrown lock-keeper’s cottage with unnuaturally green lawns, a swimming pool and what looks like a stage set. This was the Big Breakfast house until the programme was pulled in 2002.

Keep walking up the towpath until you reach steps up to Whitepost Lane. Cross the bridge, go down the steps to the towpath on the other side and walk back in the direction you have come for a few yards before turning the corner. This is the Hertford Union canal, opened in 1830 as a short cut between the Regent’s Canal and the River Lea. Look left for a view of the distinctive silouette of Norman Foster’s Swiss Re building, aka The Gherkin, a reminder of how close you are to the City.

The canal runs alongside Victoria Park on your right, built in the 1840s with the support of Queen Victoria to provide slum dwellers with fresh air. This is the east end’s largest park, with a bandstand, boating lake and florid Victoria fountain. (Divert here across the park diagonally left past the fountain for pubs and cafes in Lauriston Road or the Royal Inn on the Park).

At the junction of the Hertford Union and Regent’s Canals, go up the steps, turn left and follow the sign to Limehouse Basin along the Regent’s Canal.

Like London’s other canals, the Regent’s Canal was built to carry freight and opened between 1816 and 1820. But it was left to moulder when first railways, then roads started to carry canal freight. Now the canal network is being cleaned up, there is hot competition for narrowboat moorings and the nine mile stretch of the Regent’s Canal between Little Venice and Limehouse is an oasis of calm, especially in the built-up East End. On your left is the new Mile End Park, laid out on ground where wharves and factories once stood. Just before the end of Mile End Park on your left is the Ragged School Museum, a former school and now a museum with exhibitions about the school and east end life. Well worth a visit before returning to Limehouse Basin and the end of the walk.

Multimedia

Related Internet Links

• Map: print out a map of the Olympic walk

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