A walk on the waterside

East London isn't the first place you'd think of heading to when you pull on your walking shoes and pack your sandwiches. But if you're into views of distant electricity pylons and walks along silent canals lined with rusting corrugated-iron sheds and empty factories, you're in for a treat.

The second in our four part series on the Capital Ring focuses on the stretch between Stoke Newington and Hackney Wick, once a hive of industry centred round the busy River Lea. This is classic "cheek by jowl" London, with well-off young professionals in Stoke Newington and south Hackney living a stone's throw from council blocks and crumbling properties that house some of London's poorest. The walk includes a stroll through Walthamstow Marshes and a long stretch of the canalised section of the River Lea.

STOKE NEWINGTON TO HACKNEY WICK

Start at: Stoke Newington station (trains from Liverpool Street take about 16 minutes).

Distance: 31/2 miles.

The place: Stoke Newington (Stokey to locals) became one of London's property hotspots in the 1990s, as an influx of young professional couples and families priced out of places such as Islington moved into the Victorian terraced streets off Stoke Newington Church Street, the centre of this recently arrived colony. The street is alive with trendy cafès, bars, restaurants, second-hand book shops and quirky New Age shops.

The space: Abney Park cemetery is a mustsee for anyone who likes crumbling Victorian gravestones, sorrowing angels and neo-Gothic chapels, all struggling with the undergrowth for supremacy. Mentioning Abney Park here is cheating slightly because the Capital Ring walk starts just east of the cemetery and continues away from it, but it's worth giving yourself extra time to explore.

The properties: There is a mixture of small and medium-sized Georgian and Victorian terraces, some modern infill and conversions of industrial and commercial buildings into live/work units. Holden Matthews (020 7254 1066) is selling a 1,200sq ft live/work unit on the lowerground and raised-ground floor of St Mary's, a converted church hall off Stoke Newington Church Street for £269,950. If you'd rather have somewhere to live and work separately, there's a three-bedroom upper maisonette in a listed Georgian terrace in Sanford Terrace, overlooking Stoke Newington Common as you walk towards Stamford Hill, for £249,950. Near the cemetery in Abney Gardens is a modern, three-bedroom, mews-style town house with a patio garden for £299,950.

STAMFORD HILL/CLAPTON

The place: Stamford Hill is on the other side of the railway line from Stoke Newington and Stoke Newington station is on the edge of Stamford Hill, but the two areas are very different. Stamford Hill and Upper Clapton are home to London's largest ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Kosher food shops and Hebrew and Yiddish book shops line the wide, traffic-logged main streets and some of the Victorian houses have been converted into synagogues.

The space: Springfield Park, a wide sweep of grass sloping down to the River Lea, has excellent views of Walthamstow Marshes and Hackney Marshes, with a landscape dominated by pylons and tower blocks beyond. Just before you get to the Lea itself, check out the colourful houseboats in Springfield Marina, created in 1970 by evacuating the silt from a bend in the river.

Cross over the bridge by the marina, turn right and you're at Walthamstow Marshes, one of London's last remaining pieces of marshland, now rich in wildlife.

The properties: There are mostly large, semi-detached and terraced mid-Victorian houses, with three or four floors, in the streets off Clapton Common and Upper Clapton Road. Peter McKnight of Castles (020 8985 0106) is selling a refurbished, five-bedroom Victorian house in Ickburgh Road, close to Clapton station and North Millfields recreation ground by the river, for £375,000. A three-bedroom, split-level flat in an Edwardian terraced house with a carved wooden porch in Cleveleys Road, close to the station and recreation ground, is selling through Castles for £197,000.

SOUTH HACKNEY

The place: South Hackney is one of the poshest parts of Hackney. The area around Victoria Park is becoming popular with young professionals priced out of Islington and families targeting an area with one of Hackney's best state primary schools. Lauriston Road has antiques shops and wine bars, and the large Victorian houses, the park and the network of canals created from the River Lea make up for its lack of good transport links (even with the arrival of the East London line, it'll be a brisk walk to Haggerston or Dalston).