Nemesis
— — the ride that runs through the rock.
Not only on a wall.
“An inverted steel roller coaster cut into a quarry on the Forbidden Valley side of Alton Towers. Nemesis opened in 1994, the first inverted coaster in Europe, designed by Bolliger and Mabillard around a track that ducks beneath the path, skims a water channel, and threads four inversions in a tight footprint the park's planning permission held to. The ride closed at the end of 2022 for a full track replacement and reopened in spring 2024 as Nemesis Reborn on the original layout. The sound of the trains, more than the trains, is what carries across the valley.
Nemesis, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Nemesis sits in the Forbidden Valley area of Alton Towers, a theme park in the Staffordshire Moorlands of central England, about twenty kilometres east of Stoke-on-Trent. The ride is an inverted steel coaster built by the Swiss firm Bolliger and Mabillard, opened in March 1994, and was the first inverted coaster in Europe. Local planning restrictions capped the height of structures visible above the treeline, so the design team excavated the layout into a former quarry — the track threads through cuts in the rock rather than over them, which is the ride's signature.
The layout is short by modern standards — about 716 metres of track, a top speed near 80 kilometres per hour, and four inversions including a zero-g roll and a corkscrew — but the planning constraint that forced the trench-and-tunnel approach is what made it famous. The trains run on inverted bogies under the rails, so riders' feet hang free as the cars skim the quarry walls, drop beneath the entrance path, and run a water channel coloured red by iron oxide that flows from the surrounding rock. The Forbidden Valley themeing wraps the queue and station around this geology.
The ride ran for twenty-nine seasons before closing at the end of the 2022 season for a full track replacement. The original Bolliger and Mabillard layout was preserved exactly, while the supports and rails were rebuilt and a refreshed Forbidden Valley story was added around the queue. Nemesis Reborn opened in March 2024 to the same footprint and the same character of ride. The park's season runs from spring half-term through early November, with selected dates for the Scarefest and fireworks weekends in October.