Everyone knows about the Thames. When you think about London and rivers, the Thames is probably the first thing which comes to mind. It’s London’s biggest, most well known river; the waterway London is famous for. Yet people often forget that there are many more rivers and streams around Greater London than just the Thames.

For one there’s an entire canal system. While perhaps not as advanced as the canal networks of Venice or Amsterdam, London’s canals are a charming relic of a long gone past. Running behind houses and through parks, they weave throughout the metropolis, slightly hidden but there nonetheless if you care to look. On them you will discover a blossoming riverboat culture which you would never realise existed, if you didn’t come across it like I did. In the north-east of the city especially, there is an entire labyrinth of waterways to explore: canals, streams and even fully-formed rivers like the Lea, waiting to be walked along.

And I can. Largely thanks to the restoration work of recent times, most of these waterways now have very accessible, perfectly flat towpaths running beside them, meaning I can trundle in my powerchair along them for hours. As I wrote here, one of my favourites is to start over the Thames from the O2 at the mouth of the Lea, and go all the way up, through Cody Dock and past the Amazon warehouse, to Stratford and sometimes beyond. There is an intricate network of streams and canals there, many created over two centuries ago and possessed of rich histories, begging to be explored.

A lot is said about London’s transport system. There are obviously roads everywhere, and it’s underground train network is one of the most famous and well-developed in the world. Yet before any of them were the canals, down which barges, usually pulled by horses, plied their trade setting the foundations for a metropolis and a nation. Such waterways remain, fragments of a long-superseded past yet still bustling with activity. Yesterday, for instance, I saw a bit of the Regent’s Canal, which first began to be dug in 1812. These days it’s a quiet little waterway running for miles across north London in a semicircle. While it once bustled with trade, it still bustles with activity: people living in barges, small cafes set up on the bankside, even one or two book shops. It’s a wonderful, thriving community which is often strangely forgotten about; a fragment of a quickly fading past which is nonetheless still there, helping to give London the rich character and diversity I love it for. And when I reached Camden, I was awe-struck that such a quirky little area, so full of life, could exist without me even having known about it before.

My explorations, it seems, have barely began.