Lea Valley Walk 2: Three Mills and the Olympic Park

The idea of this walk was initially very simple: finish up The Line sculpture trail by walking from Three Mills to the Olympic park. But then I saw the maze of different water ways the Lea River / Lee Navigation follows and wondered how many of them I could explore.

Hence I ended up with this scrawl of a route that:

• Started at Stratford Tube
• Went down Water Works River 
• Then down Three Mills Wall River to Three Mills
• Back up the Lea River
• Round the Olympic Stadium (*)
• Down City Mill River as far as I could: the path ended at the railway line
• Diversion to Pudding Mill River, which was blocked south so headed north
• Covered the lower end of City Mill River
• Back down Three Mills Wall River
• Then round the other side of Three Mills Island, 
• Was unable to walk all round Three Mills Island as the path was closed (but see below)
• So crossed Three Mills Lock and walked down to Channelsea River
• Walked up to Channelsea Island, then on to Abbey Creek
• Here left the water ways to pass the amazing Abbey Mills Pumping Station
• Finally made way to West Ham tube and home.

Total distance was 9.7 km.

Note that the blocked sections are marked as yellow lines in the map above. As always in this part of London there was endless development work underway and it might be that they will be opened up in the future with walkways.

There's a huge amount of history in this part of London, from old mills to rockets. Yes, really rockets were developed here. Just south of the Channelsea River lay Sir William Congreve’s rocket works. As noted in this web site:

These were used in the Napoleonic Wars and the Anglo-American War of 1812. The ‘red glare’ of these rockets at the Battle of Fort McHenry is referred to in the American national anthem.

Some of the history can be seen on the walk around the Three Mills area, in the Three Mills History Walk.

There were lots of photos, but I'll split them into two posts, here only showing those described on The Line web site, which were between Three Mile Island and the Olympic Stadium.

Heading northwards, first up is Reaching Out, 2020:

This shows a young woman, about 9 feet high, staring at her phone. She is a replacement for an earlier similar work of a similarly oversized man - as can be seen in this web site, hence I guess the date.

At the end (or start, depending upon how you walk it) of The Line sculpture trail there is the Anish Kapoor's ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture with The Slide going down it:

Of course this reminds me of those wonderful days of the Olympics 2012. This is the London Aquatics Centre built for the 2012 games:

(*) yes, I know, it is now a football stadium. But to me it will always be the Olympic Stadium

Update: The Three Mills Island Towpath has just re-opened!