Zig-zagging along the River Lea or maybe the Nile

What is it about following a river from its start to end? Here's my first go at completing the  50-mile Lea Valley Walk. In two days I walk five miles and cycle 25. Not quite as impressive as Dr Livingstone of the Nile, but it feels like a huge achievement to have followed a path along a river. Words from Nicola Baird.

The Lea Valley Walk is well signposted. Here's
the entrance close to Tottenham Hale tube in London.

I'm clearly getting deluded by a combination of hot spring sun and heady distances, but on the first two days I've been on the Lea Valley Walk - which runs from Leagrave (the source of the River Lea) to the Thames - someone has stopped me going "Hello Nicola".  And now I think I'm Dr Livingstone charting the River Nile suddenly meeting Stanley...

Message to cyclists on the Lea Valley Walk.

Judith, the first, is with her two primary school aged daughters and husband. They are all on bikes and the plan is to cycle to Hertford. "How far is it?" I ask tentatively. "25 miles..." says Judith and laughs nervously. Turns out the family have done this before - and Judith has done it many times so knows it's a three hour off-road pedal. With the kids and the temptation of riverside pubs it may take longer, but what an adventure for them all. 

The next day I'm cycling the exact same route as Judith's family, having abandoned my dog and trainers in order to eat up the miles with my trusty bike. It's a quiet Monday so the riverside path is much less busy. There are no boat trainers shouting instructions from bikes at their skiffing crews. There are no squads of lycra-clad cyclists. There are only a couple of walkers to avoid. If you're going to enjoy walking this river then it's definitely calmer to do it on a weekday. 

Psychogeography heaven - that strange tension of rural idyll (otters?) and
yuck (pylons, river rubbish, flattened building sites).

I pass Alfie's Lock (once called Pickett's Lock) and immediately it seems like I'm in the countryside. To my right is a reservoir bank with sheep grazing. There's a heron flying across. On the lock side are sign boards explaining that this is otter country. Apparently otters sleep in their holts for most of their day emerging in the evening to play. Clearly they are perpetual teenagers...

And then I reach Enfield Island where the path swaps sides and it happens again. "Hello Nicola". This time it's Nikki, whose child went to the same nursery as my youngest - 14 years ago!

I can imagine how dazed Dr Livingstone felt when he was tracked down. He'd been in the journeying zone for months, perhaps years. I was only one and a bit hours in, but following the River Lea was turning me into the most famous of all colonial explorers.

The Nile is a great deal longer than the modest River Lea.... it's 6,853km long (4.258 miles) and passes through 11 countries on its way to the Mediterranean - Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt.  

In contrast the River Lea is easy to follow. But the roads and towns that it runs close by certainly play a game of convergence...(town to town and road to road) just like the two Niles. In Khartoum, Sudan the Blue and White Nile meet - you can see the mix happening, and hear a local talking about this on the video here.

Signs to the narrow boat cafe. Ahead lies the M25

After about two hours from my door I stop at the friendly Narrow Boat cafe. It is a well signposted, family run cafe at Waltham Abeey, just off the River Lea, so I ignore the fact that it is close to the M25, creating a strange traffic hum. It also takes cards, has a toilet and rather sweetly the waitress heats up my brownie so it oozes deliciously across the plate. I wolf it up (along with my homemade sandwiches) while admiring their goats, assortment of dogs and interesting junk shop art. This is quite a find, and perfectly sited.

The pretty Fish & Eels pub at Dobb's Weir (for a moment it's Essex)

Next stop ought to be Hertford but first I've got a long cycle. I like the way my bike's tyres are now coated with a fine white towpath powder. I get confused by discovering Cheshunt is outside the M25 but enjoy cycling past boat centres, leisure centres, wooden chalets and caravan style holiday parks. This place is clearly not just London's lungs it's a lovely spot to recharge. 

Amwell Nature Reserve - so peaceful.

They even make it OK for the birds and beasts. At Amwell, quite near the start of the New River Canal which goes into Islington, the gravel pits have been filled to create the Amwell Nature Reserve. It's a beautiful spot.

Spot the gazebos of Ware

Pedalling on I arrive at Ware, the train station I use often to get to my mum's home in Hertfordshire. It's a real treat to see the famous Ware gazebos, built to offer a bit of quiet R&R by the merchants whose houses front the high street, which used to be the main route between London to Cambridge. Ware had such a reputation as a stop off point that there are many pubs (former B&Bs) and in the museum you can even see the Great Bed of Ware which travellers at the White Hart were obliged to share (four couples). I'm told this bed was moved from hostelry to hostelry but I can't vouch for the truth of this. It belongs to the Victoria & Albert museum but in 2012 it was on loan to the Museum of Ware and I was very happy to see this famous oak fourposter.

The River Lea gets very pretty between Ware and Hertford.

It's only a mile or so to Hertford from Ware and it's the first time the River Lea loses its wooden sides and is allowed to turn into a pretty country river with meadows on either side. I'm tired now so allow myself a break to watch the Canada geese fighting. It's a good decision as almost at once I spot the first swallow of summer fly down to the river surface to skim off insects.  I could watch all day... but somehow I remount, pedal on and take the turning off the path to Hertford East station. This isn't the train station I want (much easier to locate Hertford North) but it means i have to cross the busy county town and all its congested traffic. 

After the luxury of 25 miles off road the traffic seems quite challenging. Perhaps if you do this route with children it might be an idea to wheel the bikes through Hertford town centre - or possibly take the train from Ware back to Tottenham Hale where you can relocate  to the riverside path to pedal back into London and your start point without so much traffic stress.

Update
A few weeks later I walked from Hatfield to Hertford and after the idyllic 30 miles outlined above following the river was truly surprised to be on a section of the walk that is basically River Lea free until you get to Hertford. This is the Lea Valley Walk of course, but much of it is spent by the dismal A414, the outskirts of Welwyn Garden City and the Colne Valley cycle route along a former railway.

• I used The Lea Valley Walk - a guide book from www.cicerone.co.uk  I'm using the 3rd edition (2015) with a brown and green cover. It's excellent. Bet Livingstone would have liked to write for them.

Over to you
Tell me your river walking stories. Do you enjoy pacing the river bank? Do you prefer to cycle? What's your favourite river route?

Journey to the end of the Nile

In Highgate Cemetery, a homage to lost explorers?

I quite like feeling slightly lost. Not lost, late, out of supplies, with malaria and without a map like the explorers desperate to track the Nile or the Congo to its source. I mean lost on a bike knowing I'm only a couple of streets off my target, but probably discovering new routes there's always the hope I'll find a quicker or more interesting journey. And now I like looking for rivers.

Not long ago I posted on my homemadekids blog the National Trust's list of 50 things you should have done before you are 12. See it here. On the list was dam a stream. Now I've done this before, and so have my kids (and we unblocked it when the game stopped, don't worry), but I've never spent that long messing around in a stream. Until today. 

Atmospheric ivy.

Knowing the long summer holidays are ahead I've been trying to do a day volunteering (rather than writing) most weeks this term - generally something that builds up my skills, like my turn on the Sunday rota at the local canoe club; or conservation tasks at an overgrown cemetery (see pix). These are about the only child-free things I do. Generally I find it means that I bring home tidbits about the big world outside, and often inspire my kids to have a go at what I'm doing too.

Here it is, the source of the Fleet cleaned up.

But today I'm back from a happy day in the woods, covered in mud, after tracking and digging out the source of the River Fleet. This is a very famous river in London - Fleet Street is where the newspapers used to all be produced.

Looking at Wikipedia I'm slightly doubtful about whether I really was looking at the Fleet or not - it definitely ends up subterranean, but the info isn't consistent. One to think about. But a good river source isn't always obvious. Take the Thames.

I asked Nell, 11,  if she remembered our efforts to find the source of the Thames in Gloucestershire in 2009. Amazingly she did. It seems to have had the same sort of memory impact as the Moon landings did for her dad. "Yes, I've found a river. I found the Thames. It didn't have water in it. It just looked like a stream, and then a small ditch but there were cows grazing by it. There was a small stone saying this is the mouth of the Thames. if I'd been there first I'd have put a really big stone and in really clear writing I'd have written 'this is where the famous river Thames starts' and then I'd put the date."

The trickle that turns into the Fleet River starts here.

In contrast I just crossed my fingers that unblocking the Fleet, so it now has a clear route between the graves, wouldn't lead to flooding downstream. Or Mr Child's grave on the right sinking into a deep Fleet pool.  

All quiet so far (nearly a week on).

I wonder if Livingstone enjoyed finding the Nile? Not quite sure at what point you celebrate these things - locating it, getting back to camp or when the general public know what's happened. I just know that I grinned the whole cycle journey home (despite being slightly lost)...

Tasty Congo meal

Hamburger and hot chocolate, Greek pitta, Congo veggie meal with raw salad, yellow rice and cassava leaf stew.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post offers delicious tastes from Congo, Rwanda and Liberia - all served up at a London park festival in June. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).    


At the Green Fair in Regents Park, London (June 2012) it's obvious that people who like green stuff also seem to love international flavours - especially music and food.

Top of the food stall choices Lola, Nell and I picked out was the Congo veggie meal - a huge pot of cassava leaves cooked slowly with coconut and cauliflower then served with saffron-coloured rice and a raw salad. It was not what I expected Congalese food to be like. The raw salad was gorgeous including plantain, fruits and grated carrot with a moreish sauce. The woman serving it said you can find packets of dried cassava leaf in markets that specialise in African food, for Londoners Brixton would be a good choice. In Africa cassava leaf (fresh and dry) is also used as animal fodder and to fatten up tilapia (fish).

Here is a recipe I found on the web for a similar dish (from Liberia).

Dried Cassava Leaf Soup: This is a traditional Liberian recipe for a classic stew of meat and fish with cassava leaves that's flavoured with red palm oil. In West African markets you can buy big 500g packs of finely-chopped dried or semi-dried cassava leaves. My wife often buys these as a base for soups or as an addition to palm butter soups or palm oil soups. This is a fairly simple dish that focuses on the cassava leaves themselves and is characteristic of Liberian cuisine. 

Ingredients: 500g ground or chopped dried cassava leaf 4 bonnies (or any firm white fish, cut into steaks) 3 dried bonnies (or any dried fish or smoked and dried fish) 500g meat, cubed 4 whole hot chillies (eg Scotch bonnet) 2 onions, chopped 2 tomatoes, chopped half chicken, cut into serving pieces 2 Maggi (or bouillon) cubes 1 tbsp black pepper 1/8 tsp baking soda salt 400ml red palm oil (or groundnut oil with 1 tbsp paprika) oil for frying (groundnut oil or soy oil) 

Method: Begin with the pepper paste. Add the hot chillies to a pestle and mortar along with a handful of onion and pound to a paste then add the tomatoes and pound in. Wash the dried fish thoroughly then break into pieces, removing as many bones as you can. Add the oil to a pan and use to brown the meat and chicken then set aside. Add the fish steaks and fry until coloured then set these aside. Add the onions and fry for about 5 minutes, or until soft then add half the chilli mix and fry in. Now add the meat back to the pan along with the dried fish, the pepper and Maggi cubes and cover with water. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer then cook for about 40 minutes, or until the meat is tender. Now add the cassava leaf, the remainder of the chilli paste and the baking soda and bring the mixture back to a boil. Cook, uncovered until almost all of the liquid has evaporated. Pour the palm oil into the soup, stir to combine then return to a boil, reduce to a low simmer and continue cooking for about 10 minutes. Serve hot with rice.
Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-dried-cassava-leaf-soupCopyright © celtnet

Until trying this dish I'd assumed food in the Congo was either meaty, or extremely plain like this recipe for Mikate (donuts) which are also served in Rwanda (taken from a school cookbook, downloadable).

Congo donuts (mikate)
Mix together enough self-raising flour, eggs, milk, sugar and oil to make a thick porridge. You should be able to cut it with a spoon, then fry donut-sized chunks in hot oil. Repeat until all the mixture is used.

Tip: if you want to spark this up a little a trick VSO volunteers used when on trips in rural areas (in Solomn Islands) was to use the syringe supplied by the British Council to shoot store bought jam into our homemade doughnut. It made them taste delectable!

Over to you
Have you tried dried cassava leaf? Where did you find it, and what did you cook with it?

If the Congo was in Hertfordshire

Dr Livingstone I presume?
The journalist Henry Stanley became obsessed with the Congo after he won the race to track down “missing” explorer, Dr Livingstone. This was back in the 1870s but it turned his life around – he then went on to explore the heart of Africa’s longest river.

Although the Congo has inspired some great fiction, such as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, replicating Livingstone or H M Stanley’s adventures has been all but impossible. It’s not just the size of the rainforest or the lack of roads, it’s the numerous rebels that take refuge there – and the conflict over the countries’ mineral wealth (eg, copper, cobalt and gold). There’s some good facts about this in Tim Butcher’s book, Blood River (Vintage), where he shows clearly that Congo exploration is always a no go trip.

More recently we have had the western corner of the Congo being sanctuary for rebels and besieged during the Rwandan conflict. And now the TV pictures show that the area’s exploding again as rebels push displaced people - 200,000? - towards Goma, where the UN is no doubt sweating buckets after the debacle it (and tens of thousands of innocent people) experienced only a decade ago in nearby Rwanda.

Which is why Nell, now 7, and I went on a trip to the Congo via an overhung stream that snakes through the flood meadows of the River Ash behind the pretty (and mostly safe) Hertfordshire village of Much Hadham. Nell’s been studying rainforests at school and become impressively obsessed. So we borrowed a fallen tree to make our dug out canoe and then chillily paddled down Africa’s longest river watching out for okapi and other shy beasties.

We could hear the chainsaw in the distance, imagine the humidity and had the realistic pleasure of swatting fat mosquitoes. And then we drove home in the car club car, stopping only to buy an ice cream and wave hello at a man I presume is my mum’s former GP.

That’s how a journey to the Congo should be I guess.

If you want to help support the humanitarian appeal, check out Oxfam or Christian Aid here.

Cut the carbon marchers

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during the summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint…

Since early July a handful of men and women have been walking around Britain on the Cut the Carbon march (backed by Leonard DiCaprio). This event is organized by Christian Aid – 1,000 miles in 80 days – and should take them from Belfast, via Edinburgh and through England to team up with the Labour party conference in Bournemouth on 25 September and then to London for 2 October and the day of the Climate Change Bill (please, don't let this open the door to nuclear).

On our summer travels we saw many posters advertising the Cut the Carbon marchers arrival but always seemed to miss them by a week, so when we realized we could meet and greet them at Bristol and still go to our friends John and Ann’s wedding party it felt like serendipity.

It was disappointing that there weren’t that many at the event in a city of just under 400,000 people – less than 300. Low turnout meant that Nell was able to snaffle some of the cakes made by the Mothers' Union while the rest of us enjoyed a picnic outside Bristol’s cathedral listening to the steel drums go, and later some speeches.

The marchers focused on big picture problems - rather than ones they'd seen on their journey - talking about the destruction of Easter Islands' trees (and therefore micro-climate) in order to make those infamous big and small eared stone head statues and the difficulties changed weather makes to those living in the Congo (DRC), as if there weren't enough problems in that country already.

You can support the Cut the Carbon march virtually by logging on to Christian Aid’s website and joining their shoelace protest or emailing various companies, eg, Barclays and Morrisons, to try and convince business to make more effort to publically explain how they are reducing emissions. The walkers are regular bloggers so you can get the inside story on the web.

Good luck to them all: I so wish I could have joined them but the time just isn’t right.