When you think of The Amazing Spider-Man , you think of one place and one place only.
Because of all the countless globe-trotting adventures Spider-Man has web-slung his way around, New York is his spiritual home.
So when Total Film was contacted and told we’d be sent off on a super-exciting Spider-Man adventure all our own to tie into the Digital HD, DVD and Blu-ray release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 , we started promising our nearest and dearest all manner of Statue of Liberty foam hats, and I HEART NYC hoodies.
Which is why we were a little confused at how we set off from London and ended up in Wales. Yes, Wales.
Now you may not think that an abundance of skyscraper-free rolling green hills and thousands of super-villain-less sheep immediately tally up with Spidey’s adrenalised, thwip-tastic escapades, but Wales has a couple of Spidey-licious (if that isn’t a word, it frankly should be) activities that enable you to at least feel like Spidey (all the fun of superheroing, and none of the police aggravation or accidental girlfriend-acide!).
For nestled within the breathtakingly beautiful valleys of Snowdonia sits Zip World, which boasts not only the world’s fastest zipline (also the longest zip line in the northern hemisphere, fact fans), but Bounce Below, a subterranean ex-mining caving system with a host of floating trampolines stapled to the walls.
Having skydived, bungee jumped and zip lined in the past, I thought nothing could make me feel any more Spider-Man-y than I had already. I was wrong. The Velocity zip line is gloriously mad in its extremity - after a 20 minute drive up the side of a quarry, you’re strapped into a harness and positioned so you’re floating - horizontally - just a foot off the ground.
After a few seconds spent taking in the jaw-droppingly soothing scenery, the safety catch is released, and you’re sent flying face-first at speeds in excess of 100mph across the heart of the 500ft high quarry (check out the red human-sized splodge in the image below). The mile-long zipping flies by with bowel-loosing brevity, and to be fair, it’s as simultaneously exciting, fun and enjoyable a swinging (*cough*) as I’ve done in a while, and as close to what it feels like to be Spider-Man as I could imagine.
From there, we drove ever further into the heart of Snowdonia, and arrived at the mining town of Bethesda. One quick boiler suit-up later, and I was crammed into a mining cart and trundled off into the subterranean caving system.
Bizarrely (and a bit amazingly), Bounce Below offers three levels of suspended trampoline-like nets hung within two vast chambers underground. While you can’t quite climb the walls, an array of slides, walkways and bounceable floors allow you to cartwheel your way around the remains of the Victorian slate mine.
Discombobulated, giddy and having spent a good day’s swinging, bouncing and laughing, it’s pretty much as close to Spidey as you can get without any of the inconvenience of a radioactive spider-bite.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is available on Digital HD now, and on Blu-ray and DVD on 1 September 2014.
