Outer London circuit continued:St Albans to Limehouse via the Lee/Lea Valley

Last summer, I embarked upon a set of cycle rides which together would form a low/no traffic circuit around North London. I completed two 'legs':

Leg 1: starting in the West on the Thames at Staines, I navigated my way between Heathrow Airport and the M25 to West Drayton.
Leg 2: Next I continued up the Grand Union Canal to Watford, and National Cycle Route 6 to St Albans.

Today, I completed the final Leg, though rather a long one, namely the arc around London from St Albans down to the Thames at Limehouse. A map of my GPS track is here.

I reached the start by getting the train from Guildford to Waterloo, then cycling the short distance behind the South Bank to Blackfriars station. Here I picked up a Thameslink train to St Albans City; there are no cycle restrictions leaving London in the morning. I made my way to St Albans cathedral, to pick up where I left off in my last excursion. Setting off around 11:30am, I joined Route 61 heading East. This uses a disused branch-line which has been tarmaced to provide a very pleasant traffic free route (aka the Alban Way) to Hatfield. There is then a rather circuitous route through the suburbs of Welwyn, before joining another disused railway (the Cole Green Way) to Hertford.

Here, I joined the River Lee/Lea towpaths, which I followed all the way to the Olympic Park at Stratford. The towpath as far as Hoddeson is a continuation of Route 61, then it morphs into Route 1: however, at some points, for reasons best known to itself, the official Route 1 follows a rather circuitous trail away from the towpath: I stuck to the towpath all the way.

It provides a mainly excellent greenway through an otherwise busy and industrialised part of London. I guess a lot of money has been invested under the auspices of the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority in regenerating the Valley as a green lung: it certainly seemed well used by cyclists, strollers, mums and babies, dog walkers, canal boats. The surface is generally good, although there was a rather potholed, puddled stretch just south of Dobbs Weir.

The Lee/Lea Valley is a happy hunting ground for psycho-geographers, cutting though the layers of the area's social history. The river was called 'Ley' in early times, but this morphed into Lea for the River and later Lee for the navigation. At Kings Meadow, on the towpath just outside Hertford, you pass the spot where Sir Hugh Myddleton made a fortune by tapping the river's waters into his 'New River': a masterpiece of engineering following the 100 foot contour and falling only 16 feet on its discursive journey into central London.

Iain Sinclair in London Orbital demonstrates that the valley has been at the crux of the late industrial revolution in London. "Everything starts in the Lea Valley, all the global franchises, electricity, TV, computers, killing machines...' At Waltham Abbey, were the Royal Gunpowder Works, later the site of the Propulsion, Explosives Rockets and Missiles Research establishment, now a heritage park (it wasn't open when I passed by), and Enfield Island Village is a housing development on the site of the Royal Small Arms Factory. At Ponders End, Joseph Swan, having claimed joint credit with Edison for inventing the electric light bulb, established the Ediswan Company factory. In Edmonton, Sir Jules Thorn founded Thorn Electrical Industries. At Three Mills, the original gin distillery was converted during the Great War to make acetone, essential in the manufacture of cordite; the site is now a film and TV studio, including hosting the Big Brother prison. And of course there is the Olympic Park. On the way, a stone's throw off the route, you can also visit another venerable church: Waltham Abbey, said to be the last resting place of King Harold.

I neared the Olympic Park around rush hour (see blog post for a cycle round the Park). The stadium is still fenced off for conversion to West Ham's new football ground, and I found the towpath closed, requiring a short diversion to rejoin at the Bow flyover. I was glad finally to reach the Bow Lock (where more work is going on to improve the route for cyclists and pedestrians), and to branch off on the Limehouse Cut: the towpath alongside is very narrow for the volume of rush-hour cycle and foot traffic it has to cope with.

From Limehouse, I made my way to Canary Wharf and treated myself to a ride back to the London Eye and Waterloo Station on the Thames Clipper ferry. A fascinating 48 miles.

To complement this ride, try my inner London circuit on the Regents and Grand Union canals.