Tackle zip wires, assault courses and archery at Birmingham’s brilliant The Bear Grylls Adventure

IT is 9.35am on Saturday, I’ve just negotiated a zip wire and am standing at the bottom of a 65-foot steel structure ready to begin my ascent to the high ropes with my son Zak, 13.

One last safety check and off we go . . . up, up and up some more.

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Natasha Harding takes on the zip wire at The Bear Grylls Adventure[/caption]

It’s our first challenge of the day at The Bear Grylls Adventure, housed at the NEC, Birmingham, which opened its doors in 2018.

High Ropes is inspired by the Tarzan military course and consists of 36 obstacles over three levels.

We navigate our way over rope bridges, balance beams and even cargo nets — and remembered to pose for a picture or two.

After High Ropes, we tried the assault course — which is free to everybody who collects Sun Savers codes to get tickets through our Sun Superdays offer.

Paul Tonge - The Sun

The High Ropes consist of 36 obstacles over three levels[/caption]

The assault course is based on those used in training by the Royal Marines and includes cargo nets, monkey bars and a fireman’s pole.

Bear’s time of 63 seconds isn’t threatened by my three-minute scramble. You can try the assault course as often as you like . . . but once was enough for me.

After a briefing in an Everest hut, we tried the indoor climbing challenge — a range of walls inspired by rock faces from around the world.

It was the hardest activity of the day — although the trainers made it look incredibly easy and could even do the walls one-handed.

Paul Tonge - The Sun

Natasha and son Zak pose with a model of Bear Grylls[/caption]

I learnt a lot, though, such as the importance of keeping your hips close to the wall and using your legs to power yourself, rather than pulling yourself up with your arms.

Learning didn’t help that much, though, as stayed reassuringly close to the floor.

Indoor archery was our final experience. After learning the technicalities, such as the correct way to load our arrows and how to handle the bow we had 30 minutes of target practice.

Zak proved he was a natural, and put me to shame, annoyingly.

Paul Tonge - The Sun

Zak proved he was a natural at indoor archery[/caption]

The ethos of The Bear Grylls Adventure is to challenge yourself and try new things. The staff are supportive, encouraging and very knowledgeable about the activities.

They made the atmosphere enjoyable and a lot of fun.

We had an absolutely brilliant time and I would definitely go again. I might even conquer that climbing wall.

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