Lee River

Under a kilometre downstream, at Rye House Junction, the River Lea meets the River Stort and passes over Feildes Weir, a 29-metre thin-plate weir built in 1976 with three vertical-lift sluices that also feed a parallel flood-relief channel. Feildes Weir Lock, a Canal & River Trust manual lock 85 feet by 16 feet with an 8 feet 4 inch fall, carries navigation traffic around the weir.

About 2.3 km upstream, Stanstead Lock is a similarly sized Canal & River Trust lock built around an unusual swing bridge, with a reputation as one of the network's more difficult locks to work. Canal & River Trust guidance for paddlers on its waterways is to carry a canoe or paddleboard around a lock rather than stay aboard while it fills or empties, which applies at both locks on this reach.

About 100 m from the launch stands Rye House Gatehouse, a moated brick gatehouse built in 1443 for Sir Andrew Ogard and one of the earliest substantial brick buildings in England. It is Grade I listed and a Scheduled Ancient Monument, built with diaper-pattern brickwork and a barley-sugar-twist chimney, and is now run as a small museum and park by Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, with its own quay, Rye House Quay, on the navigation.

The gatehouse's best-known moment came in 1683, when it was the meeting point for the Rye House Plot, a failed conspiracy to assassinate King Charles II and his brother the Duke of York on the road nearby.

Past Stanstead Lock, the navigation runs alongside Amwell Nature Reserve, a former gravel pit made up of Great Hardmead Lake and Holycross Lake that is now managed by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust. It is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and forms part of the Lee Valley Special Protection Area and Ramsar site.

The reserve is known for wintering wildfowl, bittern and otter, and for its resident dragonflies and damselflies, with its own dragonfly trail through reedbed, grassland and woodland.