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.

It looks as if an Olympic legacy will be a better southern ending for the Lea Valley Walk. Indeed it will mean a return to the original climax to the route.

The Lea River Park, as the River Lea south of the Olympic Park is being called, appears to have escaped government cuts.

At present the official Lea Valley Walk route from Three Mills is down the Limehouse Cut to the Thames. At first it followed with much difficulty the river to East India Dock Basin which is much nearer the river’s confluence with the Thames than Limehouse Basin.

East India Dock also has a magnificent view of the Dome which is an Olympic venue. The plan is to complete a continuous path by the River Lea by Olympic Year 2012 and proposals for the £15m project have now been submitted to Newham and Tower Hamlets Councils.

A lift and steps are to be built on the Lea Valley Walk just south of Three Mills to allow walkers to access Twelve Trees Crescent Bridge.

The left bank has a wide path already and just round the bend beyond the Royal Mail centre it will be possible to cross back over the water on a new bridge.  Here on the right bank a new park is planned. Further on a pedestrian and cycle tunnel will all walkers to pass under the very busy East India Dock Road.

The climax of the 2 mile Fatwalk, as the new path is called by planners, will be East India Dock which has a DLR station nearby.

London Thames Gateway Development Corporation boss Peter Andrews says: “We plan to overcome the challenges and obstacles such as roads and railways which have been making some of the most picturesque parts of London as accessible as buried treasure.

“The Fatwalk and the Lea River Park project will open up East London’s riverside to Londoners, creating a truly special place, while unlocking the immense regeneration potential within.”

LDA deputy CEO Peter Bishop adds: “With planning permission, the work on the Fatwalk can now go ahead and we can see the planned Lea River Park start to take shape. The Lea River Park is part of plans to build a lasting Olympic legacy in east London before the 2012 games.”

It’s the Spring into Summer Walk London weekend coming up and on Saturday 22 May there is a long stretch of the Lea Valley Walk included in the programme.

The ambitious day starts at Cheshunt Station just outside London at 11am. A leader will take the party twelve miles south on the Lea Valley Walk down to Three Mills near Bow. The estimated time of arrival is 4pm.

Anyone joining in the free walk is advised to bring a picnic although a lunch stop is planned at the Princess of Wales next to Lea Bridge.

I am not leading this one but I think it’s the longest Walk London has tried in the Lea Valley. The weather forecast is good.

See pages 88 to 119.

The Camden New Journal has a scoop this week when reporting the death of Anna Wernher.

The 85 year old is the last link with the great days of Luton Hoo.

The mansion, now an hotel, was bought in 1903 by her grandfather Sir Julius Wernher who rebuilt the house.

Anna was Sir Julius’s granddaughter. Her father was the second baronet Sir Derrick Julius Wernher who died in 1948.

He was succeeded by his brother Sir Harold who was married to Zia, daughter of a Russian Grand Duke. The couple, Anna’s uncle and aunt, welcomed the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh for a weekend every November.

Nearby East Hyde churchyard has the striking Wernher mausoleum and it is expected that Anna will be buried there.

See pages 31 and 34.