Travel, exploration, adventure can come at a cost. In these days, when tourism creates so many problems, from carbon emissions to over-crowding, it’s good to remember that there are new places to visit on your door step. There are loads of options, just a short train ride from London.
Maps, whether online or physical are wonderful imagination stirrers. The borderlands between Hertfordshire and Essex, from Ware, stretching down into London are full of lakes and rivers, linked or skirted by the various incarnations of the River Lee / Lea. The map was so enticing, the area begged to be seen in real life.
Ware is less than an hour from Liverpool Street and a five minute walked landed us on the west bank of the River Lee Navigation. This is a canalised strand of the River Lea, which just to confuse also goes under the name of the River Lee, hence the Lee Valley Park.
We walked south, back towards London, past narrow boats and barges and the odd motor launch. Pretty soon, we can to a crossing for Amwell Quarry Nature Reserve. It made a good detour and frankly, we could have spent all day there. Visitors to these former gravel pits have the chance to see kingfishers and bitterns (in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Stapleton suggests that the “long, low moan, indescribably sad” might be bittern booming, rather than the eponymous hound). For our part, we had dragonflies and damselflies in mind and saw lots, including common blue and azure damsels and the ruddy and common darter dragonflies.
After a picnic lunch, we continued on our way, passing locks and weirs and under the A414, where the water reflecting its ripples on the concrete ceiling of the underpass. Walking in early September, we picked blackberries from the hedgerows. There was the occasional apple tree too but we were a week or two too early for them. The odd narrowboat had an honesty box on shore and we paid a pound for a thyme plant.
Just past a riverside pub called The Fish and Eels is Dobb’s Weir, where children fished (you need a day permit if you want to join them). Rather than follow the path across the weir and continuing south along the Lee, we held our course and passed through a little park, crossed the busy Essex Road and entered a gated lane next to the Lee Valley Caravan Park. With the River Lynch to our left, a footbridge took us over the railway, where the river is replaced another old gravel pit called Admiral’s Walk Lake and then a field, with horses.
Eventually, we came to another river or at least thought we did. New River isn’t a river but an aqueduct built early in the 17th century to take water from Chadwell Spring and the River Lea down to London. It’s quite fast flowing, with long, waving, green weed and is lovely. We turned left without crossing it. The opposite bank is lined with very expensive looking houses, with the water at the foot of their gardens.
Before long, we reached Broxbourne station. It’s the third one back from Ware, after St Margarets and Rye House. The walk, with a bit of exploring en route and picnic stops took about five hours. It could have been lengthened or shortened as our mood took us.
As is often the case, a walk opens up other ideas for walks. The upper reaches of New River and the lower of the River Lee Navigation. Then there is RSPB Rye Meads (another nature reserve) and those greats slabs of blue that originally attracted me to the area, such as Glen Faba and Abbotts Lake not to mention other water courses like the River Stort, Toll House Stream and the delightfully named Small River Lea or Lee. It really is amazing what lies just beyond your doorstep.
Quote of the day, from the youngest of our party; “There’s a duck that looks like Mr Spock”. It was a female mallard and it does look a bit Vulcan. Here are a few more pictures.