“The only easy day was yesterday,” insists one of the slogans daubed inside Britain’s newest tourist attraction: the Bear Grylls Adventure.
But first you have to reach it, and London Northwestern Railway appears to be in on the “most incredible mental and physical challenges” that the latest addition to Birmingham’s assets promises.
The train from London Euston to the Bear Grylls Experience was full of traps. National Rail Enquiries said it would leave from platform 11 at 7.13am. In fact, it left 15 minutes later from platform 12, which is not as close to 11 as those of us who have not conquered Everest aged 23 would wish. One minute after leaving, the train ground to a halt and silence descended. We sat staring at a graffiti-filled wall, presumably part of a disorientation exercise.
Later at Northampton, the automated lady announced “We will be calling at Leighton Buzzard, Bletchley, Milton Keynes …”, all places that we had left back down the track. And once in Warwickshire, things got positively sinister: “We will shortly arrive at Rugby. Make sure you have all your belongings with you or they may be removed and could be destroyed.” What goes to Rugby, stays in Rugby, apparently.
Fortunately the train did not stay in Rugby and finally made it along the Northwest Passage to the forward operating base for the Bear Grylls Experience: Birmingham International station.
From here explorers can thread north through the badlands of the National Exhibition Centre and out of a door where, next a car park, stands “The Home of Earth’s greatest adventure challenges” – signalled by a giant cage which contains what are claimed to be the highest high ropes in Europe.
The visitor chooses from a menu of activities. This visual taster is a three-dimensional, and alarmingly mobile, maze of ropes, nets, rolling logs and suspended planks – many of them wobblier than a paramotoring flight over the Himalayas (another of Bear’s achievements). From on high you can see the aircraft flying in and out of Birmingham airport, a mile away, but if you are plane-spotting you are not probably not paying enough attention to your footing.
Access to the ropes is an adventure itself: via a zipwire from a reconstructed rear of a Chinook helicopter. It could get chilly in midwinter in the Midlands.
The remainder of the activities are inside a shed of impressive large dimensions, even by the cubic standards of the NEC.
The climbing challenge involves trying to find a course up a near-vertical wall with slightly too few hand- and foot-holds for comfort. For vertical power, rely on your legs; they tend to be much stronger than arms, which I find are more useful for clinging on for dear life than for Spiderman antics.
Climbing and bouldering walls are fairly common in cities and towns. What is not so easily available is “Pure Freefall” – an expanding concept which basically aims to simulate skydiving without the tiresome and expensive business of jumping out of an aeroplane.
All that is needed: an industrial-sized fan and a huge plastic cylinder, which becomes a vertical wind tunnel. Participants ride on a cushion of air: twisting, turning, rising and falling.
Bear Grylls promises “intense wind speeds equivalent to the freefall time of more than three skydives”. Anyone who has tried one of the iFLY franchise locations, such as high-flying Milton Keynes, will know that one of the lesser-known hazards is inadvertent drooling.
“Take on the Deep,” the aquatic option, is not yet up and running (or, rather, down and diving). But the aquarium where it will take place is already populated with creatures of the deep, including stingray and black tip reef sharks (the small and un-menacing variety).
You can choose from a two-hour dive, including instruction and equipment, or snorkelling in a cage for 90 minutes.
The Bear Grills Adventure is not a day out for young families; it is designed for over 15s, though for some activities the age limit comes down to 11. There are height, weight and health restrictions, too; no-one with a dislocated shoulder is allowed on the freefall, for example.
Wealth restrictions will also keep some people away, because it is far from a cheap day out.
The basic £20 admission buys “Ninety Action-Packed Minutes” in the shape of four adventures: a survival maze, an escape room, archery and, the most engrossing, an assault course.
But ropes, climbing, freefall and diving are classed as “Hero Activities”, for which you pay more. Ropes and climbing each add £15 to the cost, while snorkelling is an extra £25, freefall £45 and diving £80. Try the lot (except snorkelling) and you can spend all day there for £160.
Time to re-enter the real world. Ten minutes’ gentle yomp away, the departure board at Birmingham International announced: “15.30 London Euston Cancelled”.
The man at the ticket desk announced: “You can travel on Virgin Trains instead, but it will cost you £53.”
As Bear Grylls says: “When your greatest fears are laid bare, you have to keep your nerve and dig deep.”
When I finally returned to the office, a colleague enquired delicately: “Did you bite the head off a snake and drink your own wee?”
Not at the Bear Grylls Experience nor on the train, though on the latter it was a close-run thing.
