Bear Grylls Adventure Birmingham – I Did It!
The Bear Grylls Adventure has landed in Birmingham and its now open!
It’s the Home of Earth’s greatest adventure challenges set to test your limits as you take on some of the world’s most incredible mental and physical challenges inspired by Bear’s love of adventure. You’ll get all geared up and ready to climb, dive, fly, zip, leap, scramble and explore. Escape the ordinary and push yourself to achieve the remarkable. It’s incredible.
Upon arrival at the NEC, there’s a special car park just for the Bear Grylls Adventure users which has a cheaper rate to park than other events. You’ll be given a yellow token from the machine which helps calculate how long you’ve been there as the car park is charged by the hour. A little bit of advice, when you get to the Reception counter, don’t forget to ask them to Validate your token or you’ll be charged a ‘non validation’ charge of £20. We got back to the car before realising this and had to walk back to get it validated so just a quick heads up.
The whole place looks amazing, once you step through those front doors it’s like you’ve left Birmingham behind and headed into a whole new world. I loved the decorations and props inside. There were crashed helicopters stuck in trees, army trucks to eat your lunch on the back of and tyre tracks across the floors that looked like wet patched but weren’t. They were pretty cool as they had me fooled, I had to go over and touch them to see for myself.
The staff were all very friendly and helped us book in quickly, with no problems. Our Basecamp time was 10.30 so once we were all there, we were all set to start. Our group had a total of 8 people in it so the groups were nice and small which I liked. Our guide, Cameron was great at explaining what we going to do and lead us along on our journey.
Basecamp is made up of 4 activities: the Break Out Escape Room, Targets Archery, the Survival Maze and the Assault Course. Each one was great fun. Yes they did push me to my limits but I did them all and was so proud of myself at the end after having completed them. The Escape Room was quite hard and both our teams failed to get out by themselves but we had fun trying. The Survival Maze was the scariest for me but it was also very exciting. The Archery was fun – I got three bullseyes! Nobody else even got one so I was happy and the assault Course was the hardest physically but again I gave it my best shot.
You may remember, I wrote a post a few days ago telling you all about how I was going to take on the Deep in their Dive Challenge. I told you the truth, that I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be able to go through with it or not but I went along with a positive mental attitude and was determined to do it and I did! It was hard for me but the instructors were amazing and helped me through everything I was struggling with and I did it. I Dived!
This is the huge tank where the Dive takes place.
It’s filled with Sharks, StingRays and all sort of Tropical Fish.
The Dive is a 2 hour experience which will cost you £100 but that price includes all 4 Basecamp activities too which I think is a really decent price for such a ‘once of a lifetime’ experience. I’d never dreamt that I’d be able to Dive with Sharks in the middle of Birmingham before but it is now possible thanks to Bear Grylls and his Adventures.
What to expect:
- Experience the tropical tank together with over 800 sea creatures!
- PADI beginner’s certificate – All safety equipment provided
- Each dive will generate a donation to the Shark Trust
- Entry to the Adventure Basecamp
- Total experience time: 210min
Please arrive 30 minutes prior to your start time.
The instructors were so friendly and helpful and really helped me overcome my fears of being under water. Thanks to their patience, I got to experience something that I will truly never forget. I was underwater for a whole 20 minutes walking around the bottom of the tank. It was so surreal and I truly loved every minute of it. I thought beforehand that I was going to be terrified of the sharks but I wasn’t. They were actually more scared of me than I was of them. They happily swam around the top of the tank leaving me alone at the bottom.
Above, is me doing the OK sign with the fishes in the tank. I was lucky enough to be allowed my GoPro in with us so I’ve popped Video below for you too see what it was all like.
I can hand on heart recommend this experience to everyone as it’s so amazing. Each Dive is with no more than 4 people at one time so you get a very personal experience. You will need to book your tickets online as this is going to be very popular once the word gets out.
Let me know if you decide to go, I’d love to hear how you get on.
Disclosure: I was invited to the Bear Grylls Adventure for free in return for an honest review.
Wow I think this sounds amazing!
Such a fun and exciting day out! It looks like you had an amazing time!