River Lea from Hertford to the Thames 20 miles by boat, bike & on foot Pt1 of 4

Part 1 of 4 starts at the Woolpack Pub as does the Lee Navigation, a 20 mile long channel of the River Lea that was made navigable by building 20 locks from the mid 1600s to the mid 1800s.
The Lee Navigation enabled wooden-horse drawn, iron-steam powered then steel-diesel driven barges. to transport primarily grain from farms of Hertfordshire to return with goods from the docklands of east London through the wetlands, woodland, farms and towns of the Lea Valley.
The Romans built the very first lock in Britain over 2000 years ago in order to improve access for boats and keep the water of the Lea drinkable from that of the brackish Thames.
London becoming the world’s hub owes everything to Its rivers flowing down from the northern and southern highlands into the Thames.
And they still do today, along the original topography but have been buried by a city that has risen by an average of 10 metres of rubble, etc, except the most important of them all, the Lea which skirts the eastern flank of the city.
They provided transportation as well as water for drinking, washing, construction, irrigation and fishing. Fresh water fish could also be caught on the Thames’ outgoing tide and sea fish on the incoming as is still the case today. Likewise boats could sail in with the tide to deliver their cargo to the centre before loading up to return with the outgoing tide to the North Sea all within 24 hours.
Neither Paris, Madrid nor Berlin stood at the crossroads between southern and northern
Europe with such easy safe access for shipping. Also, to attack London by boat, invaders had to run the 80+ mile gauntlet of the Thames estuary.
It was also the point where the river became narrow enough to build bridges across.
The Ancient Britons had done just that during the 3000 years they had inhabited the valley long before the Romans arrived.
Richard [email protected]