Lea Valley Walk 2: Three Mills and the Olympic Park photos

Urban post-industrial landscapes under moody skies.

Abbey Mills pumping station and a pump.

Short parts of the walk (along Abbey Creek) felt surprisingly rural:

Hmmmm.... no actual photos of either Abbey Mills or the Olympic Park here. Oh well, you get the idea, they are photos from that part of the walk.

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!

Lea Valley Walk 1: Trinity Buoy Wharf to Three Mills

This is part of the Lea Valley Walk proper, and I used this guide from TFL, though walking the route in reverse, a total here of 6.3 km from the cable car to Bromley-by-Bow tube.

The developments being thrown up all along the walk mean there were routing options not shown on the TFL map. Some of these were visible on Google Maps (as above) but this was wrong too If you look about half way up you'll see a yellow arrow. This was a section where Google Maps showed a nice riverside walk ending up at Cody Dock, but reality it ended up at a metal fence.

I wasn't the only one confused, as there were two young woman also puzzling how to proceed. However we worked out the thing to do was to clamber round the metal fence into what looked like a builder's yard and then get out from that via the fence with the "absolutely no admittance" sign on it.

Moral of the story: don't rely on Google maps to show public rights of way.

Anyhow, starting at Trinity Buoy Wharf, the route initially goes around the various loops of the Lea River, with coloured apartment blocks and the DLR snaking between them:

This development calls itself London City Island, which is odd as it a) isn't an island b) isn't in the City of London.

Then there's a seriously industrial bit before getting to the waterside walk that ended in the metal fence:

You can see that getting round the side isn't that hard. Beyond is Cody Dock, which looked like a cool place to hang out:

Not sure the above is on The Line sculpture trail, but the one below was. It's called DNA DL90, and, yes it's made up of old shopping trolleys arranged into a double helix:

From here it was a short walk to the lovely Three Mills:

These were tidal mills and the site goes back many hundreds of years - all the way to the Doomsday Book. I really should come back and explore this more, but during lockdown it wasn't possible to go inside.

In this case I felt that was enough for one day and made my way to Bromley-On-Bow and the tube home.

Lea Valley Walk 1: Lunch at Trinity Buoy Wharf

It's a non-obvious walk from the end of the Dangleway to Trinity Buoy Wharf, which is probably why various route options suggest a very round-about option of taking the Docklands Light Railway (DLR).

Anyway, by walking along some dual carriageways, I made it on foot and found a table at the Fatboy's Diner (above).

This is an authentic American Diner which has been moved round the corner from when I visited it before.

It was a good place to put my feet up and admire the various art works.

Note this is not on The Line sculpture trail but is the end / start of the Lea Valley walk proper.

With my burger (no fries) eaten, it was time to head out for the walk proper...

Lea Valley Walk 1: The Dangleway

After walking around the O2 Arena, it was time to take the Dangleway aka the cable car over to the north bank of the Thames and Docklands.

The Dangleway was put in for the Millennium celebrations and has it detractors, for TBH, it's never that busy. But on the plus side - it's never that busy!

Also, it does have really great views, though not if you don't like heights and it can get "interesting" when windy. I've been on it a couple of times, as blogged here (at night) and here.

So after walking round the O2 off I went and very impressive the views were too:

At the far end there's a bit more art in the shape of this bird boy (without a tail):

Hmmmm...

After that it was time for lunch...

BTW, if you want to know more about the Dangleway, there's this "Secrets of the Cable Car" video from the Londonist. Fair warning, though, it was published on the 1st of April!

The source for the name Dangleway apparently is the Diamond Geezer.

Lea Valley Walk 1: The Line at the O2

I started my Lea Valley walk at the O2 Arena, which is definitely not on the Lea River, being on the south side of the Thames.

But it is opposite where the Lea joins the Thames and the end point of The Line sculpture walk which I was effectively doing in reverse.

The O2 Arena is a good place to start as it has excellent transport in the form of the North Greenwich Jubilee line station and facilities if you need them like sandwich places and loos.

This leg was a short 1.8 km walk round the O2 looking at the art work, ending up at the cable car aka the Dangleway.

First up was Alex Chinneck's A Bullet from a Shooting Star:

This looks like an electricity pylon that has fallen like a javelin, ending up stuck in ground. It used to be impressive to see while on Thames Clippers zooming by, but they seem to have built this ugly black building between it and the Thames which seems a bit of a shame.

Here's one of those Thames Clippers with Docklands behind and a junk sailed yacht passing by:

Next up is a sign saying "Here 24,859" which is located exactly on Longitude = 0 after which there is the much cooler 1/8th slice of an ocean going sand dredger, the Arco Trent:

Impressive! And it can't be hidden from those travelling up the Thames, unlink the upside down electricity pylon.

Next there's Gary Hume's Liberty Grip, an abstract in bronze, before we get to a Gormley, which are always good value. 

I've seen a few before, including this exhibition at the Hayward Gallery back in 2007. In this case it's Quantum Cloud:

There's a figure at the centre of those tetrahedral sections, which is very cool. I'm seriously not sure about the quantum angle, as that's a word that is overused, particularly by those that don't understand it (though arguably that is everyone).

From here it's a short walk to the cable car station to catch the Dangleway...

The Lea Valley Walk

This summer's project has been following the Lea Valley Walk - or at least parts of it. 

The full walk is a good 80 km (50 miles) long, but I restricted myself to those bits covered by Transport for London as in their web site page for the walk.

Transport for London's route headed south, starting at Waltham Cross and ends at either Trinity Buoy Wharf or Limehouse Basin, but I did it the other way round, starting at the Thames and heading north.

I also combined it with another walk, namely The Line, which is an outdoor sculpture trail that ends at the O2 Arena, but again I did it in reverse. The Lea splits into all sorts of channels around the old Olympic Stadium, and I spent some time exploring which were accessible.

The resulting segments were:

• Walk 1: O2 to Three Mills (8.1 km)
• Walk 2: Three Mills and Olympic Park (9.7 km)
• Walk 3: Hackney Marshes (11 km)
• Walk 4: Clapton Pond to Meridian Water (8.9 km)
• Walk 5: Meridian Water to Waltham Cross (11.7 km)

That was around 50 km in total. There was also a bonus walk of the:

• Walk 6: Greenway from the Olympic Park out to North Woolwich (11.8 km).

I'm tagging these with label "Lea Valley" so when these all the relevant posts are published you can find them by clicking here.

Update 1

One thing should point out is the difference between the Lea and the Lee. Basically anything natural is called "Lea" - as in Lea River - while anything of human construction is called "Lee" - such as the Lee Navigation. See this post on Wikipedia.

Update 2

Useful - if slightly out of date - post on the Londonist web site about the walk

Supermoon brings super tides

You can't ignore the tides if you live near the Thames, particularly along parts of the Thames path such as that part along Putney Embankment. At high tide this can flood, especially during the high tide after a supermoon, such as the one we had yesterday.

It's all to easy to get stuck and risk wet feet (as shown above) or even a wet car engine:

At least this one wasn't in danger of floating away like the BMW in this post!

Is this a canal?

I thought I knew about the canals of London, even short ones (such as the Grosvenor blogged here) or lost ones (as shown in maps at the London Canal Museum, blogged here) but then the Evening Standard wrote about a new one!

This was potentially very exciting, so I headed out to have a look - see photo above. According to the Evening Standard, it was part of another of these upmarket apartment developments. Their web site was very fancy and even showed stylish people paddle boarding on the their "canal":

Credit: image from here

The image was indeed accurate: there was a broad water way with bridges (see top). But is it a canal?

Wikipedia describes a canal as:

Canals are waterways channels, or artificial waterways, for water conveyance, or to service water transport vehicles.

Does this do either of these things? I'm not sure it does - it isn't connected to any other water body and is too small for boats bigger than a SUP. It appears to me to be a canal-like water feature. There was even a bubbler in it to keep the water aerated.

What do you think? Is this a canal?

Fulham Cottage Riverstand Update

There's some sort of a football thing going on right now, so here's a post related to that sport.

Over the last year or two, observers of traffic on the Thames will have noticed a number of structures such as the one above and below being towed upriver.

These were all heading the same way from Tilbury up to Fulham, in particular to the redevelopment of the Fulham football club stadium, for the new Riverstand.

Here these pre-fabricated sections are fitted together using a crane on a barge floating nearby:

Getting the barges up to Fulham is challenge given the number of bridges, some of which are very low. So the passage plans have to take account of the tide and bridge heights, and it can take 2 days to get them up from Tilbury Docks with the right river depths and bridge clearances.

There's a useful video here.

It's really coming together:

I'm not a great football watcher but there should also be a new riverside walk which I'm looking forward to trying out.

Updated: stand as of this afternoon:

Book Review: The Secret World of Weather by Tristan Gooley

Weather is always with us, every day, where ever we are. You'd have thought that this would mean there is nothing left for us to learn about it, but in this brilliant book I discovered that is wrong. There is much more to weather than simply clicking on an app.

Previously Tristan Gooley has written a series of books about Natural Navigation and How to Read Water (as reviewed here) and his latest is called The Secret World of Weather (UK cover above, it is different in the US).

Full disclosure Tristan's a friend of mine, but that really makes no difference to this review, for this was a fascinating read.

The book looks at the relationship between the local, such as hills, valley, rivers, plants and buildings and the weather, how they interact, changing it.

A simple example comes from the sail Tristan and I did to the Arctic Circle: we spotted the clouds above the Faroes Islands before we saw the islands themselves, until all of a sudden we were there:

This contained many examples of these, from eddies around buildings, to birds rising on thermals, to the different types of rain, to the secret laws, to the tree fan, to canopy breeze, to the wind bulge, to finding coastlines from clouds to..... so many new ideas, and then integrated into a framework.

I kept wanting to try out what I've read by looking at the sky, trying to read the clues. This is a book to come back to, to observe the natural world and then re-read the relevant sections, to learn to connect what you see with what is happening, to know what to look for.

I found myself peering at the sky, checking out the commas, the mares' tails that come down from cirrus clouds, thinking myself into the layers of the atmosphere, reading the sky as I'd read the book.

Strongly recommended!

Boats, Boats, Boats again on the Thames

Lockdown is easing and so the boats are out again on the Thames - which is good to see!

 

Back on Thames Clippers!

Lockdown is easing and this weekend the weather has finally been warm and I've had my first trip on the Thames Clippers!

The river felt very quiet when they weren't running and I've missed the great view of London from their decks:

I was going from the Tate Modern (where had seen the amazing Yayoi Kusama infinity boxes) to the Tate Britain (for the Turner and the Modern World exhibition) so obviously took the Tate to Tate Thames Clipper aka RB 2.

Drone Survey Boat on the Thames

Recently I spotted what looked like a drone vessel on the Thames (above). I wasn't entirely sure what it does but guessed those two pods on arms at the top were antennas for satellite navigation, hence it could be surveying.

A bit of googling later and came up links such as this to this product page for the HyDrone-RCV which as expected is a remote controlled drone boat for surveying purposes.

As a sense of scale, here is it being retrieved:

Very cool.

Bark Europa's sail home

One of the stories to come out of Covid-19 was that of the Bark Europa. It became stuck in Ushuaia when the pandemic struck and had to sail all the way back to the Netherlands.

This is the lovely film of that epic voyage.

Enjoy!

Farewell Arthur Beale Chandler

Sad news that Covid has another victim in the shape of the ship's chandler Arthur Beale. This shop has been a spiritual home for sailors in the heart of London for literally hundreds of years.

I remember wandering over in 2014 when it had just been taken over by Alasdair Flint and having a tour including seeing the impressive basement (above) where there were tools of all sorts, just the thing that should be in a chandler.

This was clearly more than just a shop. It also had pedigree, links for famous expeditions that either fitted out there or requested gear to be shipped out to exotic locations.

Having just got back from Greenland and read Dancing on Ice (full book review here), an account of the Watkins Expedition, I was totally impressed by this telegram from Watkins himself to Arthur Beale asking for "100 foot Alpine lines" to be sent to Angmagssalik, Greenland.

They also arranged a number of really interesting talks, including:

• Alasdair's trip to Jan Mayen and climbing the mighty Beerenberg
• A high latitude forum
• Jane Maufe and the background to her book The Frozen Frontier
• Paul Heiney and the background to his book One Wild Story

It's loss has been noted by many, including Time Out and the BBC.

It will be much missed!

Buff Solves Hammersmith Bridge Problem

 G'day all! Buff Staysail here! Buff by name and Buff by nature!

Well like typical poms there's been a lot of whingeing in London about Hammersmith Bridge being closed! Doh! Like Buff would be afraid to cross a bridge just because it might fall down at any moment!!

And for like years nothing's been done - there's been talk of ferries, but do I see one? 

So Buff Enterprises has offered to come to the rescue of poor west Londoners with his solution - a zip wire!!!

It's brilliant, why hasn't anyone suggested it!!!???

All you need is to create two towers at either bank then thread a wire which travellers can zip across in seconds.

Imagine the fun for all! Children off to school! Parents doing their shopping! Grandparents off to see their GP! Make sure you don't drop your homework / shopping / glasses in the river!!

It wouldn't be the first time, either, that a zip wire has been used to cross the Thames. A couple of years ago one was set up to cross from St. Thomas's Hospital to Westminster - read about it here and watch the video here:

How awesome is that! Key quote: "fastest river crossing ever"!!!

So come on London Transport, invest in Buff Enterprise's latest venture: a zip wire across the Thames at Hammersmith! It would be Buff Brilliant!!

This is Buff Staysail, over and out!!