I have been on the towpath alongside the Olympic park today in preparation for leading the walk this Saturday 30 January.

One of the weekend Walk London routes is ‘The Lower Lee Valley: Hackney Wick to Limehouse Station’.

The Greenway will be open for us to look at progress on the stadium and the swimming pool. Open on the path now is the Olympic View Tube where we can stop for refreshments, toilets and the view. This is a little visited spot so it will be good to be there ahead of crowds.

After the future we shall see the past in the form of the tide mill at Three Mills.

The walk is about five miles although there is no need to do it all.

Meet at 1pm on Saturday outside Hackney Wick Station. This is one stop from Stratford.

No charges. It’s a TfL initiative to get us walking.

Hope to see lots of you there.

I shall be leading a free walk down the Lea Valley as part of the Walk London weekend.

Meet at 1pm on Saturday 30 January at Hackney Wick Station to walk south to Limehouse.

It’s  a chance to catch up on progress in the Olympic Park before following the Limehouse Cut from Three Mills to the River Thames.

There is a handy station at the end.

More information on this 5 mile Urban Amble in a few days.

Vanessa Feltz conducted a debate on BBC Radio London yesterday about the spelling of the Lea Valley. She called it a debate “gripping the capital”.

The first caller was Keith from Harpenden who made the very good point that the River Lea rises at Leagrave.

I had a five minute interview with her afterwards when we ranged over the various river spellings in past centuries.

This is what I said in the Daily Telegraph yesterday: “In the 19th century, the Ordnance Survey decided to use both Lea and Lee. In 1967 an Act of Parliament established the Lee Valley Regional Park.

“However, the Lee Valley Park recognises the river’s name as Lea. With the Olympics approaching, I think it is time to accept that the entire valley, extending from Luton to Bow Creek, is now known to most people as the Lea Valley.”

Following a plea in The Daily Telegraph letters page for us to agree on a spelling for the Lea/Lee Valley before the Olympics I have joined in the debate.

I have for some time been thinking that we ought to adopt the Lea spelling not only for the river but also the valley. I sometimes use Lea for the valley when talking about the river route rather than just place.

A second letter in the Telegraph today disagrees but it is difficult to hold the line. There have been many variations over the last two centuries so it is not  a matter of being correct. Maybe we need to be consistent. The press now tends to use Lea for both and river and valley.

BBC London has some surprising pictures of Limehouse Basin at the end of the Lea Valley Walk.

The Story of Limehouse is an audio slideshow of old and new pictures starting at the Narrow Street swing bridge.

The lock keeper reminds us that St Anne’s Church at Limehouse was there before the Lea Navigation. We do I think often forget that it was not always a waterside church.

See page 124.

By the Thirties the Lea Valley contained the largest concentration of greenhouses in the world.

Indeed Tesco headquarters is at Cheshunt because that was near the glasshouses and salad supplies.

The Lowewood Museum at Broxbourne is looking for old film and pictures.

“Jim Lewis is an extraordinary man” says architect Terry Farrell who credits him with revealing that the Lea Valley was the cradle of the post-industrial revolution.

It was thanks to Richard Rutter at the Lee Valley Park, now with British Waterways, that I first came across Dr Lewis. That was ten years ago.

Another book soon followed and now there are three new ones published by the Middlesex University Press.

In Battleships, Buses and Bombers: A history of transport in the Lea Valley, the author proves that it was not just British flying that was developed in the Lea Valley but steam engines and buses. London Transport was invented there.

Brunel’s Tamar bridge has girders supplied by the Thames Ironworks in Bow Creek where great ships were built.

Most revealing is the chapter explaining how the name Vauxhall was taken to London in the 13th century and brought back to Luton with the invention of the motor car.

Water and Waste: Four hundred years of health improvements in the Lea Valley starts with the parallel New River, still bringing water to the capital, and ends with the revolutionary London Waste EcoPark between Pickett’s Lock and Tottenham Marshes.

A chapter called ‘The Valley That Feeds The Metropolis’ has pictures of cucumber greenhouses at Cheshunt and flower pot drying houses at Tottenham.

Particularly interesting is the chapter on the recently reopened Markfield Pumping Station at Tottenham.

The third book, From Gunpowder to Guns, is the story of the Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey, a forgotten site until a few years ago, and the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield which has now become a residential island.

The chapters in each book are concise. There are maps and the illustrations show both the past and present of the now Olympic valley.

Indeed I await with great interest Dr Lewis’s next book in this series which is called From Eton Manor to the Olympics: More Lea Valley secrets revealed.

Forman’s, the smoked salmon company forced to relocate as it was in the Olympic Park, found a new site on Fish Island.

The company has launched a webcam showing the Lea Valley Walk towpath just above Old Ford Lock with the Olympic stadium beyond. You can watch progress.