As views go, it probably wouldn't have stopped Constable in his tracks.

Soggy old newspapers are strewn in the scrub, which stretches out towards the factories, substations and warehouses of Tottenham. A thin drizzle falls on a field of half-built houses. There's a low hum of electricity overhead. A child's push-along car is half-immersed, nose down in the filth of the river, as if Noddy was driving along the riverbank one day and decided to commit suicide here.

This is the point where the River Lea Navigation meets the A104, in a backwater of Hackney. It would be eccentric to call it beautiful, but it is undeniably poignant, rich in detail and suggestion.

You can imagine a perverse sort of father climbing the bridge with his son, pointing out the landmarks on the horizon. "That, son, is the High Maynard Reservoir. And if look yonder, you just might make out the regional distribution depot for Safeways".

Or you could map out the social history of east London, take a glimpse into the future. This is one of the sites currently being redeveloped for the London Games in 2012. Almost £10 billion is being spent on reclaiming this polluted land, building new homes and facilities. But some people seem to be happy with things as they are. "F**k the Olympics", someone has written on the construction hoardings.

I was inspired to explore this patch - which I had not realised was so close to my doorstep - by the marvellous book, Derelict London, the springboard for hundreds of urban walks.

It's the work of the amateur photgrapher Paul Talling, who was inspired to keep an archive of ruin when he witnessed the demolition of a once-glorious candle factory down his road in 2003. He began to snap crumbling buildings all over London and filed them on his wonderful website, which now forms a wonderful catalogue of the capital's social history. Shots of the old Crystal Palace, the ill-fated Tobacco Docks development and Victorian pubs giving way to Starbucks are richly evocative.

The website devotes a whole section to the Lower Lea Valley regeneration - and exploring the area, it's not hard to see why Talling is in two minds about it. These waterways were labelled a "corridor of dereliction" by the Olympics developers; however, the GLA designated them as a vital area of urban conservation. Indeed, as you turn the corner from the scene described above, you come across a haven of water birds and plants and a quiet you do not often encounter in London. A Haywain for the 21st century, perhaps.