Reading about BBC television presenter Kate Silverton recalling in The Guardian her Saturday job at Philpott’s in Waltham Abbey makes me want to go back there now.

The tea shop is in the churchyard of the ancient abbey. Apparently Kate used to bake the scones.

See page 96.

The Lee Valley Leisure Complex is heading for a relaunch as a ‘regional leisure destination’ reports publicpropertyuk.com.

The centre opened opened in 1973 as the Pickett’s Lock Centre and includes a cinema as well as a bowls hall and other facilities including the golf course.

It’s not easy to access from Pickett’s Lock so maybe a link from the Lea Valley Walk towpath could be included in new plans.

Southwark Lib Dem councillor James Barber is not happy about every household having to pay £3 a year with the council tax to maintain the Lea Valley Park -or the Lee Valley Regional Park to use the official name.

He says that it looks a lovely park from pictures for those that live near it.

But he adds: “Trouble is I’ve yet to meet anyone in Southwark who’s heard of it, let alone know where it is, can tell me its purpose, let alone realise that they are paying for it.”

This is not the time to cut the tax. Southwark residents now live very close to the Lea Valley. It takes just 9 minutes from Bermondsey to Canning Town on the Jubilee Line.

By 2012 the continuous path from the source of the River Lea near Luton will have been extended south from the Olympic Park to East India Docks via Bow Creek at Canning Town.

The Lea Valley north-south green corridor contains much of England’s history from the tomb of King Harold who died at the Battle of Hastings to the invention of the Thermos flask at Ponders End.

The park is an investment which we should all enjoy. For those who cannot walk too far there will even be a waterbus service from next year.

Olympic benefits will soon be seen.

A waterbus serving the Olympic Park will be launched by next spring says British Waterways.

Water Chariots will operate the service between Old Ford Lock and Limehouse Basin with a pick up stop at Three Mills. City Mill Lock is being restored for the Olympic Games. A new lock and water control structure is being built at Three Mills.

This will certainly benefit walkers. There are also plans to build a floating towpath to make the route more continuous.

see pages 115 to 125.

Diamond Geezer has  a good piece this week on visiting the Olympic water centre near Waltham Abbey.

He says that the best view is from the Lea Valley Walk and the nearest station is Theobalds Grove.

At major stage has been reached at the Olympic water centre close to Waltham Abbey.

The Waltham Forest Guardian has the first pictures.

See page

Jim Lewis is the Lea Valley historian who has written several very interesting and useful books.

His latest paperback is particularly welcome as we see the Bow Back Rivers become the Olympic focus for 2012.

From Eton Manor To The Olympics: More Lea Valley secrets revealed (Libri Publishing; £9.99) looks at the Eton College connection in the main Olympic site area.

There is a picture of two boys looking like the Bisto Kids who are described as “typical East End boys that Gerald Wellesley wished to help”. He was the Duke of Wellington’s grandson who, as an old Etonian, led the drive to improve life in the Hackney Wick area.

Hackney Wick’s Victorian church is dedicated to Our Lady of Eton as part of the college’s mission to the poor.

Wellesley was concerned that the Eton Mission Boys’ Club started in 1888 left older boys without a meeting place. His solution was to found the Eton Boys’ Club for young men over over 18 years of age.

The purchase of the Hackney Wick Farm and Manor House gave us the name Eton Manor. Out of this was born the allotments which have only recently given way to the Olympic Park. The author’s great find is that the 1948 London Olympic athletics track at Wembley was relaid in the Lea Valley at Leyton.

The book has more about the Tesco association with the Lea Valley. It started at Clapton before moving upstream to Cheshunt. There is also new information on Harper Twelvetrees and his Imperial Chemical Works at Three Mills.

At about the time Wellesley was concerning himself with poor boys and teenagers there was another pioneer with plans for mixing the classes. Robert Baden-Powell’s Scout movement later based itself a little north at Gilwell Park on the side of the valley with views across the King George V Reservoir.

This book has a sponsor in the form of Wright’s Flour and so there is a chapter on London’s only family owned flour mill which is found on the River Lea not far from Gilwell.

There is much more in this enjoyable book with new research but it is probably not the last in Jim Lewis’s great series.

“I was attracted to Waltham Abbey by the exciting diversity of the benefice, by the history of worship at the Abbey over 950 years and by the fact that so much good work is already going on here,” says the new rector Peter Smith.

He is the successor to the abbots of Waltham and has also been speaking about “reawakening the Abbey’s tradition as a place of pilgrimage”.

The abbey is indeed a wonderful Lea Valley landmark with its associations with King Canute, King Harold of Battle of Hastings fame and Henry II’s penance for the murder of St Thomas Becket. Its bells are Tennyson’s ‘wild bells’.

Fr Smith, with a background in church music, is no doubt delighted to find that it was at Waltham Abbey that the carol Hark, the Herald Angel Sings was first sung to its now familiar Mendelssohn tune.

Even if you are not stopping off at Waltham Abbey when on the Lea Valley Walk it is worth going up on to the road just to look east at the direct view of the tower and west door.

See page 89 to 91.

Early notice for the Heritage Open Days in September has been given by the Lee Valley Park.

The gateway of Rye House will be open free of charge on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 September from 11am to 4pm free of the usual admission charge.

You can climb up on to the roof and inspect the brick ‘barley sugar’ chimney.

See page 77.

The Olympic Delivery Authority has released pictures of the White Water Centre on Cheshunt Marsh near Waltham Abbey.

It is due to be completed in the autumn and open for public use next April. The London Olympics will take place 15 months later.

See page 89.