JUMP OFF
A CLIFF
The Zip at Adrenalin Quarry, in South East Cornwall, is the UK’s biggest ever zip wire. Longest at 490m; highest at 50m; fastest at 40mph. Twin parallel wires cross the flooded depths of the old quarry, sheer cliffs rise on either side.
NO NEED TO BOOK
JUST ARRIVE AND DIVE
The Zip is the only place in the UK where
you can just turn up and jump. No fuss, no pre-booking, no hours of waiting around – we throw you off our cliff within minutes of arrival.
NO AGE LIMIT,
NO EXCUSES
Anyone can do The Zip. Last year our youngest jumper was only 4, the oldest 93. If they can do it, you can too.
NO CONTEST
Adrenalin Quarry is consistently ranked top of the national press lists of things to do in Cornwall. Eat your ice cream and baste on the beach tomorrow, because there’s some unfinished business to sort here. No time like the present.
‘I MUST HAVE GONE DOWN 25 TIMES IN ONE DAY, I LOVED IT SO MUCH’
SUZY PERRY, THE GADGET SHOW 2009
THERE WAS A TIME
BEFORE THE INTERNET
In 1989, when tellies were three-foot deep and google only meant something to Open University mathematicians with combed sideburns, the party people of south-east Cornwall had to make their own entertain-
ment. Every summer weekend someone would organise a big outdoor adventure.
A favourite haunt was the disused quarry at Goldiggings on Bodmin Moor, where barbecues, cliff jumping, swimming and abseiling were always on the menu. Then one day, just for a change, someone put up a zip wire that plunged straight into the lake below. Just a knot, a pulley and screwed up eyes.
No harness, no option but to jump. It proved the most popular attraction of the lot and soon became the focal point for future meets.
‘YOU SHOULD DO THAT’
After an especially lively gathering, where everyone and everything ended up in the lake, one party stalwart, the legendary Gaz Wallace of Downderry, had a brainwave.
At the time, he was a regular at Clicker Trikes, the local Cornwall tourist attraction and forerunner of Kartworld. On his next visit, Gaz told Will Sneyd, the proprietor and future founder of Adrenalin Quarry Ltd, ‘You should build a really big zip in your quarry.’
The idea stuck, dreams were dreamed and
life went on. While Clicker Trikes evolved into The Quad Centre and then finally became Kartworld, which it remains today, the abandoned quarry stayed completely hidden to the thousands of visitors that passed by only metres away every week…
BEGINNING OF AQ
Truth is, when the opportunity came to build The UK’s Longest Zip Wire, the homework had been done. The basics were there already. There was a strong footfall of tourists coming to the site with Cornwall’s motorsport mecca, Kartworld, only a rock’s throw away.
The experience of developing Clicker Trikes into Kartworld was invaluable in the building of
Adrenalin Quarry Ltd. The team could draw on a lot of goodwill and contacts and were quickly able to tap in to the new popularity of extreme sports outdoor activities, which was being reflected in the rapidly changing nature of Cornwall’s tourist market.
Then there was the rise of adrenalin and extreme sports in the UK, which spurred big developments in equipment and build expertise. 20 years ago, what Wallace proposed and Sneyd dreamed of, wasn’t technically possible. Now it was.
But it nearly didn’t happen at all…
YOU MIGHT AS WELL
START AT THE BOTTOM
Extracts from the diary of The Adrenalin Freak (AKA Will Sneyd)
Autumn 2007
I’m in a bed at Redlands Hospital, Bristol, wondering what happened. I can hear the Talking Heads - this is not my beautiful life, this is not my beautiful car - in my head, but I can’t remember the name of the song. That bothers me not one little bit as I have other fish to fry. Jessie’s there when I come round from my operation - double discectomy and spinal fusion. ‘Wiggle your toes,’ she says. She’s not asking, she’s telling. So I do. They move! Bliss. I go back to sleep smiling.
A gap of a couple of months, painkillers and drinking mostly, not a good look for a man with two kids and another on the way. I wear a plastic collar to hold my head on while new bone grows through the two titanium cages in my neck. The amazing Mr Porter put them in to me and filled them with bone dust that he removed with a grinder from the vertebrae behind my voice box.
I’m a mess and I need to get better quick because I have plans and the clock is ticking louder than ever. Mr Porter told me he had done the best job possible, but the fix wouldn’t last forever.
He said that I should get on with my life.
Summer 2008
Did a lot of net searches, you tube, everything. Had a look at the zip wire videos, looked at the big ones in South Africa and France. Amazing, awesome even. What I’m trying to figure out is how to land people at the right place in one piece – give them the longest steepest, fastest possible ride in the space available. The landing/stopping methods used by the competition aren’t going to work on the scale needed to make this rock. I checked out platforms that swung out, raised up, static platforms, rollers, sandpits. Some places lower you onto the ground, some zipwires let you do it yourself. Some of them have a landing like a train hitting the buffers, others are just slow and lame.
November 2008
Enter Brian Phelps from Vertigo Pursuits,
who says: 'Don't worry, this is going to be amazing.' During site visits with him I realize first that I have no idea how to do it; second, I want him to build it. I'd been thinking I could do lots of research and sling it up myself. Hmmmmm. Glad I ran into him. It might seem obvious, but we had to figure out where to put it. I want to cross the quarry void at a diagonal and stretch further over the Hoverworld field. Brian has other ideas. 'You got to think out how to get them off at the bottom,' he says. Christ, I'm thinking of nothing else. He see what I've missed: the ground underneath the old access road rises at the same angle as the cable should when it swings back up from the lake to the lower anchor points. Simple.
December 2008
Simple? You kidding me? Anyway, there we are in the cold and rain and I’m still none the wiser. Mystified, I watch as Brian lurches off into some scrub at the top of the cliff, chainsaw screaming over his head. Reminds me of some film. The bushes start to fly.
January 2009
It’s an auspicious moment as the first massive post is driven into the ground. It’s also a worrying one. People need paying. A short conversation follows to my nearest…
‘Darling, you know the mortgage isn't all that big when you think about it?’
END OF THE LINE
So, The Zip, the UK’s longest, highest, fastest zip wire (in case you didn’t know) has been the result of chance remarks, extensive research, fortune, pig-headedness and the realisation that you need to squeeze every second of your life for all its worth.
OPEN 10AM - 6PM
EVERY DAY
