Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [14]
We would move together cautiously across the white chalk faces, imagining they were really ice. I had this utter confidence that I could climb Everest if he was beside me.
I had no idea what Everest would really involve but I loved the dream together.
These were powerful, magical times. Bonding. Intimate. Fun. And I miss them a lot even today. How good it would feel to get the chance to do that with him just once more.
I think that is why I find it often so emotional taking my own boys hiking or climbing nowadays. Mountains create powerful bonds between people. It is their great appeal to me.
But it wasn’t just climbing. Dad and I would often go to the local stables and hire a couple of horses for a tenner and go jumping the breakwaters along the beach.
Every time I fell off in the wet sand, and was on the verge of bursting into tears, Dad would applaud me and say that I was slowly becoming a horseman. In other words, you can’t become a decent horseman until you fall off and get up again, a good number of times.
There’s life in a nutshell.
CHAPTER 12
On one occasion we were on Dartmoor, a wild part of the UK in all seasons, and were staying at a small inn, walking and riding each day.
It was in the depth of winter, with snow on the ground, and I can remember how freezing cold it was every day.
My young, boyish face felt as if it was literally about to freeze solid. I couldn’t feel the end of my nose at all, which for someone with a big one like myself (even aged ten), was a scary new physical phenomenon.
I started to cry; that usually worked to show Dad that things were serious and needed his attention. But he just told me to ‘cover up better and push through it. We are on a proper expedition now, and this is no time to whinge. The discomfort will pass.’
So I shut up, and he was right; and I felt proud to have endured in my own little way.
Moments like that encouraged me to believe that I could persevere – especially (and more importantly), when I felt cold and rotten.
Nothing, though, was ever forced on me by him, but a lot was expected if I was to join in these adventures. As my own confidence grew, so did the desire to push myself, each time a little bit further.
We also spent a lot of days messing about together boating. Mum had been thoroughly put off boats by my dad early on in their marriage, due to what she called his ‘gung-ho attitude’. I, though, loved the ‘gung-ho’ bits, and craved for the weather to be bad and the waves to be big.
I had a real goal one day to own my own speedboat; to be able to drive around in it and to tinker with the engine. Obviously a real speedboat was out of the question, but instead I got to build one with my dad: a very cool little eight-foot wooden rowing boat with a 1.5 h.p. engine on the back.
The boat was barely fast enough to make any progress against the incoming tides, but it was perfect for me. We rigged up an improvised cable system, linked to a steering wheel bolted into the bench, and I was away.
I would head off to meet my mum and dad at a small bay a few miles around the coast – I would go by sea, they would walk. I just loved the freedom that I found, being in charge of a boat on the sea.
I was always pushing Dad to allow me to take Lara’s second-hand Laser sailing boat out on my own. (This was a single-handed racing dinghy, super-prone to capsizing, and requiring substantially more weight than my puny eleven-year-old frame could offer.)
I just thrived off the challenge; the solitude; the big waves and spray.
I loved the time alone, just nature and me – but only as long as I had that safety net of knowing that Dad was nearby on hand to help in a crisis. (Which was often the case.)
And I felt on top of the world as I sailed back into harbour, drenched like a drowned rat, grinning from ear to ear, hands and muscles burning from holding the lines so tightly, against the same strong wind that had driven all the