[1] Leaving Tottenham Hale tube station (TQ345895), turn left up Ferry Lane along the A503. Cross the traffic-light junction at Mill Mead Road and Jarrow Road, go down the steps onto the riverside path and turn right under the road, signposted for Walthamstow Marshes. You’re bound to see the odd plastic bag snared by brambles on the water edge, but you have even more chance of seeing swans, geese, ducks and black-headed gulls. The river views soon open up, with willow trees dipping their branches in the Lea, houseboats puffing out smoke from welcoming wooden stoves, and gantries and cranes – leftover echoes from the river’s converted wharves.
[2] Just past Springhill Rowing Club, cross Horseshoe Bridge to the east bank of the river (TQ348876) to enter Walthamstow marshes. It’s always an unworldly place, with, in summer, cattle grazing beneath a grid of electricity pylons. Further on, as you pass under a modest train bridge, nod your head to the ghost of Alliott Verdon Roe who used the bridge arches as a launchpad for his visionary tri-plane, managing to fly 900ft (and live to tell the tale). Follow the path past Leyton Marshes to the ice rink.
[3] Cross the A104 and drop down to the west side of the Lea by the Princess of Wales pub. After 400m turn left over the narrow bridge to the east side of the navigation and enter the Middlesex Filter Beds through the black iron gates.
Water purification was relocated in 1969 and today the beds are full of strangely beautiful sunken craters overrun with brown-headed reedmace and willows. Around 700m to the east of the filter beds lies the more substantial Waterworks nature reserve, which has a bird hide and a café, and makes for a short signposted there-and-back-again diversion. You may spot some of the 2,000 newts relocated from the site of the Olympic Park to the nature reserve as part of the Game’s environmental legacy.
[4] Leave the filter beds to the south. The river splits here, and we take the canalised western branch. An Act of Parliament in 1766 provided for the construction of 15 news cuts to straighten the Lea, eliminate loops and aid navigation. The resulting canalised water, Lee Navigation, is spelt, confusingly, with two ‘e’s.
[5] The Olympic skyline now hoves into view, dominated by the contorted iron structure of the 115-metre high observation tower. The river nudges right up against the Olympic park, passing first the huge rectangular media centre, then the energy centre and the Olympic stadium – overshadowed by a high fence and ubiquitous security. Further south, the path threads through Old Ford Island to reach Mill Meads and the newly restored Three Mills Lock, with its distinctive Clock House mill topped by Oast-House style gables tipped at a rakish angle.
[6] The Lee/Lea heads south, but tracking it to its mouth involves a dreary trudge along the Blackwall Tunnel approach road. A better ending is to follow the Lea south from Tide Mill for 400m and then at Bow Locks (TQ383824) take the Limehouse Cut, which drills south-west for 3km to Limehouse Basin. The route, mainly passing residential housing, acts as a walking history lesson on how the area has exchanged its backbreaking shipping-related labours for riverside living. Limehouse DLR station is well signposted, and just to the west of the basin.