Zip Down to Brighton For Thrills and Excitement!

The latest tourist attraction is taking flight in Brighton!

Design courtesy of @BrightonZip

Leaping!

Now, we thought that a zip wire along the seafront was a gag, rumour like the waterslides we read about and the fast lanes on Oxford Street, a fun idea that would never happen. But we were wrong! Walking past the bottom of The Stein your intrepid correspondent saw the tower through the mist and murk of a June afternoon.

The tower appears to be completed, and it must have gone up in a matter of only a few days at the most as I had been in the area the previous week and seen nothing but the workmen clearing up the last of the Brighton Wheel, which has trundled on to pastures new. But now there is a tower, and soon to be a landing pad adjacent to the Steve Ovett statue some 300 metres along the seafront.

It’s great seeing so many new and exciting adventures opening up in Brighton. I must admit, I had become used to the Wheel and was rather disappointed to see it go. The i360 has garnered a lot of attention and different points of view. Some love it while others prefer to scoff. The revamped Volks Railway will be re-opening soon too, with its new visitor centre, refreshed rolling stock and conservation workshop at Peter Pan Playground. It does seem funny, walking down to the Marina in summer and not having the trains trundling by, making their incongruent ghost-train like wails!

Brighton Zip, it is said, will be open from 10am until 11pm all year round. While we can see a ride

Landing!

being fun and exciting on a summer’s afternoon, we’re a little more dubious about how we feel about going down in a gale in the depths of a winter’s night!

The spiral staircase leading to a zip wire isn’t an altogether new idea. We found pictures of a similar amusement that was installed in Gorki Park in the 1930s. And we were shocked at how much fun, and ridiculously dangerous it looked! Russian thrill seekers didn’t so much ‘zip’ down the line though, they leapt from the top of the tower in a semi-functioning parachute which was directed to the landing point, and prevented from blowing away, by a line. The tower also had a helter-skelter to slide back down on for people who got to the observation deck and decided that they didn’t quite fancy leaping from the top of a spiraling column, notwithstanding the parachute they were equipped with.

I’m looking forward to the opening of the Brighton Zip very much and can’t wait to go on it!