You are on a Mesopotamia, a causeway between two watercourses: down to the left — fifteen feet down — is the river, and close beside you on the right is a leet, or channel running at this high level in order to pour over the wheel of the mill.
     The river is called, in general, the Lim (or Lym). Like most river-names in England it dates back before the Saxons, to the Celts; and of course the name of the town flows from that of the river. But the river actually flows under three different names. This complex reach of it, where it is accompanied by the side-channel, is the Lynch; then lower down, as it debouches into the sea, it becomes the Buddle. The path you are on, beside the Lynch, is the Lynchway. And as for the leet, it is called, or was in earlier times, the Trench.
     This part of the leet may be running or it may today be dry. Some way along is a sluice that diverts the leet over into the river. The little leet often seems to have more water in it than the much wider riverbed below (because the water has been diverted higher up). When the steel gate of the sluice is pulled up (quite an operation), the cascade to the river becomes a spouting roar; and the leet below this point becomes dry, showing that this is a time when the mill wheel is not being operated.
     Across the leet are six small bridges. The bridges lead into the gardens of houses, which are set at a mixture of angles to the leet, because they have been inserted into the lobe-shaped space between it and Coombe Street.
     A measure of how high the river can rise after heavy rain is that the water occasionally fills the low arches of these bridges. It thunders along, piling branches against the bridges and carrying ducklings out to sea. One night in early July 2012 the water rose over the top of the bridges and the Lynchway path, leaving mud on it.
     Just beyond the sluice is an arched footbridge high across the river to a lawn perched on the high opposite wall of the river.
     Beyond this the Lynchway curves on, high and narrow, toward ancient Gosling Bridge, in whose side there is an abundance of small wild daisies. The path takes one step up onto the middle of the bridge.
PICTURE: Gosling piazza seen from the leet]
     Here you may turn into the street on the right.
     Or step left across the bridge into a space, almost like a piazza, where three ways meet: a path that doubles back on the other side of the river, a steeply rising street (Hill Road) that I suggest you ignore (unless you are returning to your car in the Woodmead car park), and a rising lane on the other side of the Angel Inn.