LONDON TOWPATH WALKS

A "Walkabout Card" is available from the guide, which costs £7.00 (£6.00 for students and pensioners). This includes the cost of the walk on which you buy it and entitles you to go on as many other London Walks walks as you like within a month at a reduced price of £5.00.

These towpaths walks are a small part of the full London Walks programme, which you will find on their web site .

This programme of walks was started by Dr. Michael Essex-Lopresti for London IWA, in 1977 and we teamed up with The Original London Walks in 1993. Michael is one of the leading experts on the history of the Regent's Canal. He retired as one of the walks guides in 1998.

The Regent's Canal was built between 1812 and 1820. Before this date the Grand Junction Canal had been built to make a direct connection from the Midlands to London, joining the Thames at Brentford, west of London, and with a branch to Paddington. The Regent's was designed to continue the line of this canal along the then northern edge of London, through Regent's Park, Camden Town, St Pancras and Islington and then swing south through Hackney, Bow and Mile End, to reach the Thames on the eastern side of London at Limehouse, where a dock was built for transhipment of cargoes between canal boats and sea-going vessels.

The Regent's Canal was a successful and profitable one, carrying goods for the export & import trade of London Docks as well as traffic between London and the Midlands. The last regular freight traffic on it was of imported timber from the London Docks to timber yards in the Mile End area. That traffic ceased sometime around 1970, by which time leisure use of the canals was growing, so the Regent's was never out of use.

Our walks cover the eight-and-a-half miles of the Regent's Canal in four sections as listed below. You can see a map of the Regent's canal here and some pictures of it here. You can down-load a PDF version (127KB) of our booklet "Discovering the Regent's Canal" by clicking here. (It's a PDF document so you'll need the Adobe Acrobat reader for it : if you don't have that, you can down-load it free of charge here .)

The Bow Back Rivers are backwaters of the River Lee in east London. They were formed as the huge marsh that use to form the outfall of the Lee into the Thames was drained and its waters confined in a number of channels, natural ones at first but increasingly over the centuries the work of man. This area was one of the nurseries of London's industry. First, in Saxon times if not earlier, came milling of grain brought into London down the Lee from the farmlands of Essex and Hertfordshire. Then as the messier industries were expelled from the City of London, several of them moved here. Milling of grain led to the production and milling of malt for distilleries, which was the main purpose of the two surviving tide mills at Three Mills. One of these, the House Mill, is possibly the largest tide mill ever built anywhere. The building has been restored and is open to the public on Sundays. You could visit the House Mill for an hours or two before joining our walk on a Sunday afternoon.

The northern part of the Bow Back Rivers is in the middle of the area where the complex for the 2012 Olympics will be built, so access to the towpaths may not be easy after 2007. Come and see this area while you can and before it all changes.

You can see a map of the Bow Back Rivers here and some pictures of them here. If you have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can down-load a PDF version (138KB) of our booklet "Discovering the Bow Back Rivers" by clicking here. (It's a PDF document so you'll need the Adobe Acrobat reader for it : if you don't have that, you can down-load it free of charge  here .)

Note that this walk is a bit longer than the standard London Walks two hours - more like two-and-a-half hours.

PADDINGTON BASIN, LITTLE VENICE AND THE PADDINGTON ARM

This a new walk we plan to launch in the Summer of 2007 which will show our walkers parts of the Paddington Branch of the Grand Union canal and of the Regent's Canal. On this walk you will see the contrast between, on the one hand all the new development that has taken place in recent years around Paddington Basin, turning what used to be London's least-known bit of canal into a thriving city-centre community, and on the other the relaxed Regency atmosphere of Browning's Pool at the heart of Little Venice.

Currently the walks are led by six guides, all of whom are members of IWA and involved in other waterways activities.

Aileen Butler is a retired Civil Servant. She is a very experienced narrowboat owner and also collects Victorian magic lantern slides of the waterways. She has been one of our towpath guides since 1991. She is our Treasurer.

Peter Finch is a retired trade union officer. He owns a motor cruiser moored on the tidal Thames. He has crewed on IWA's exhibition boat Jubilee, sails with the Thames Sailing Barge Trust and is active in the River Thames Society. He works seasonally as a trip-boat skipper. He joined our walks team in 2005 and now co-ordinates our programme.

Mike Gee worked in IT for most of his career, retiring from IBM in 2003. Since then he has done voluntary work at the London Canal Museum and giving disabled people rides round Hyde Park in electric buggies. Mike and his partner have owned since 1992 a 48 feet narrowboat. He joined our team in 2006.

Mike Harlock is a Committee member of IWA Middlesex Branch. He joined the walks team in 2003. He works for BT, is a former boat-owner and hopes to be one again soon.

Roger Wilkinson is a past Secretary of IWA London Region and currently Chairman of IWA North and East London Branch. He has explored the waterways extensively by narrowboat and canoe. He has been one of our towpath guides since 1999.

Unless otherwise stated all text on this site is copyright, © IWA London Region,
photos & maps copyright © Michael L Stevens.

The IWA may not agree with opinions expressed on this web site, but encourages publication as a matter of interest. Nothing here may be construed as policy or an official announcement unless so stated.

The Inland Waterways Association Reg. Office: 3 Norfolk Court, Norfolk Road, Rickmansworth, WD3 1LT. A non-profit distributing company limited by guarantee. Registered in England no 612245. Registered as a charity No 212342

Go to the top of this page