Once the site of a gas-works, the Becton Alps is perhaps London’s most inappropriately named geographical feature; For starters there is only one of ‘em and you can cycle to the top in less than five minutes. Instead of a layer of glacial permafrost, the Beckton Alps are covered with scraggy grass and litter from the bored teenagers who use it as a place to hang out and ingest skag.
The slope was opened by the “People’s Princess” (check the middle photo), and remained open from 1989 to 2001. Many of my friends used to go there, so it must have been a fun place to attract so many people. The slope closed in order to make way for a new indoor slope with the promise of all-year skiing on real snow.
This was once a popular dry ski-slope. Today it is a derelict slag-heap overlooking a retail park.
Of course, the new ski-slope never got built. Beckton is governed by notoriously inept Newham Council. The contractors employed to build the new slope quickly found themselves in financial difficulty and the project was suspended. Allegedly, all involved feared competition from a nearby (Milton Keynes) snow-slope, after nobody from East London likes skiing or snow-boarding.
The land is still owned and mis-managed by Newham who officialy claim that the project is going ahead, but at an unspecified time in the future.
If you want to see this for yourself you will have to climb the Alps!
So it is currently a wasteland, overlooking some of London’s most dreary shopping areas, but fortunately full of unintentional art like these corroding steel piles. I have no idea if they are supposed to be holding something up, or perhaps they have been placed there by an aincient skiing tribe to ward off evil spirits.
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