by Bear Grylls
This is essentially a very English ethos: work hard, play hard; be modest; do your job to your utmost, laugh at yourself and sometimes, if you have to, cuff it.
I found that these qualities were ones that I loved in others, and they were qualities that subconsciously I was aspiring to in myself – whether I knew it or not.
One truth never changed for me at Eton: however much I threw myself into life there, the bare fact was that I still really lived for the holidays – to be back at home with my mum and dad, and Lara, in the Isle of Wight.
It was always where my heart really was.
As I got older, the scope of my world increased.
My mum helped me buy a second-hand moped (in fact it was more like eighth-hand, thinking about it), and was also an ‘elderly person’s’ model – and in purple. But it was a set of wheels, despite only being 50 c.c.
I rode it everywhere: around our little village to see friends, and into town to go to the gym. (I had found a gritty, weightlifters’ gym that I loved going to as often as I could.) I rode the moped on the beach at night, and I ragged it up the dirt tracks (as much as one can rag an ‘elderly person’s’ purple moped).
I felt free.
Mum was always so generous to Lara and me growing up, and it helped me develop a very healthy attitude to money. You could never accuse my mum of being tight: she was free, fun, mad and endlessly giving everything away – always. Sometimes that last part became a bit annoying (such as if it was some belonging of ours that Mum had decided someone else would benefit more from), but more often than not we were on the receiving end of her generosity, and that was a great spirit to grow up around.
Mum’s generosity ensured that as adults we never became too attached to, or attracted by money.
I learnt from her that before you can get, you have to give, and that money is like a river – if you try to block it up and dam it (i.e. cling on to it), then, like a dammed river, the water will go stagnant and stale, and your life will fester. If you keep the stream moving, and keep giving stuff and money away, wherever you can, then the river and the rewards will keep flowing in.
I love the quote she once gave me: ‘When supply seems to have dried up, look around you quickly for something to give away.’ It is a law of the universe: to get good things you must first give away good things. (And of course this applies to love and friendship, as well.)
Mum was also very tolerant of my unusual aspirations. When I found a ninjutsu school, through a magazine, I was determined to go and seek it out and train there. The problem was that it was at the far end of the island in some pretty rough council estate hall. This was before the moped, so poor Mum drove me every week … and would wait for me. I probably never even really thanked her.
So, thank you, Mum … for all those times and so much more.
By the way, the ninjutsu has come in real handy, at times.
CHAPTER 27
One of the many great things about growing up on the Isle of Wight was that during the wintertime the community was quiet: the weather was blowy and the sea was wild.
I loved that – it gave me time to climb, train, and do all the outdoorsy stuff I had started to need so badly.
Then in summertime, it would go crazy, with families from London and beyond coming down and renting cottages for the holidays. Suddenly the place would be teeming with kids my age with whom to mess about, sail, and hang out. I loved it then, even more.
I would arrange with friends to sneak out after dark and meet on the beach for barbecues, fires and to drink as much illegally bought alcohol as could be found. (At fifteen, this was more often than not a big bottle of cider ‘borrowed’ from one of our parents, in the hope that they wouldn’t notice it was missing.)
We would sit on the beach, swig from the bottle, throw stones into the sea and stoke up a big fire. I loved these times so much.
Mick Crosthwaite was one of my closest friends down on the island during these summers, and he was also at Eton with me. We eventually went on to join the military, climb Everest and cross the North Atlantic Arctic Ocean together. But really the friendship started on the beach.
Sneaking out of home was relatively easy. A sloping roof from my bedroom window led to a drainpipe, and from there it was a simple twelve-foot slither down on to the lawn.
A breeze compared with school.
Mum and Dad would come and say goodnight, they would leave, switch the light out, close the door, and I would be gone.
Life on the beach at night was great. I had my first real teenage kiss with a girl I really liked, on a bench overlooking the sea – and the world was all good.
If we weren’t on the beach we would be in one of each other’s houses. (It had to be someone’s house whose parents were more liberal than mine and didn’t mind a load of kids watching films until 4 a.m. upstairs. My folks, kind of rightly, would never have allowed that.)
I remember, one week, we all started playing strip poker.
This is more like it, I thought.
It wasn’t really even poker, but was more like: pick an ace and lose an item of clothing. I tried one night to rig the cards so that I could end up naked with Stephie, this girl I really fancied.
I carefully counted out the cards and the aces, and rather unsubtly made sure I was sitting next to her, when we started playing. Annoyingly, she then swapped places when someone else came to join us and I ended naked next to Mick, embarrassed and self-conscious. (That will teach me to cheat.)
Most of the time my attempts to get a girl fell pretty flat.
In fact, whenever I really liked a girl I would always end up losing her to someone else, mainly because I found it so hard to make my feelings known and to pluck up the courage just to ask her out.
I remember a friend coming down to the island to stay at the end of one summer, and within twenty-four hours he was in bed with the girl I had been chasing all holidays!
I couldn’t believe it. What the hell did he have that I didn’t?
I noticed that he wore these brown suede cowboy boots, so I went out and bought a second-hand pair, but I just looked stupid in them. To make matters worse, this ‘friend’ then went on to describe to me in great detail what they had got up to in that bed.
Aarrgh.
It kind of summed up my attempts at womanizing.
CHAPTER 28
One of the very strong memories for me, from growing up on the island, was reading my school reports and opening my exam results.
I would always grab the official letter before anyone could open it ‘accidentally’ before me, and I would sprint down the end of our garden where there was this gorgeous big sycamore tree.
It had amazing limbs, perfectly spaced for monkey-style climbing. Over the years, I had got it down to a fine art, being able to reach the highest limbs of this tree in a matter of seconds, and from there I would have a commanding view over the whole village.
None of my friends ever went to the very top of this tree with me as it always began to sway and wobble precariously as you reached the very last few branches.
But I loved that part.
Opening the reports or exam results up here meant that whatever the outcome, I had time and space to keep things in perspective.
OK, so I flunked another maths exam and the Latin teacher says I must stop ‘sniggering like a puppy in class’, but from up here, the world looks pretty all right.
By the time I came down I would be ready to face the music.
I never had anything to fear, though, from Mum and Dad when it came to school reports. The reports weren’t ever all bad, but they definitely weren’t ever all good. But Mum and Dad just loved me, regardless, and that has helped me so much in my life: to have the confidence to just be myself and to go for things.
I have never minded risking failure, because I was never punished for failing.
Life was about the journey – and the fun and adventure along the way. It was never just about the destination, such
as getting perfect exam results or making the top team. (Dad had always been pretty hopeless at sports and academia, yet he had done well and was greatly loved – so that was good enough for me.)
He would always say that what really matters in life is to ‘Follow your dreams and to look after your friends and family along the way.’ That was life in a nutshell for him, and I so hope to pass that on to my boys as they grow up.
On that note, I would slip the school reports in the bin and get a big hug.
The other final memory, from growing up on the island, is of going on a monster run one day, and getting very bad groin rub on the last mile towards home.
I had endured the rubbing for the previous eight miles, but it was now becoming agony. No one was around, the village was deserted, it was a warm summer’s evening, so I took my shorts off and continued the final leg of the run naked.
No sooner had I run a hundred metres than I heard a police siren right behind me.
I could not believe it.
I mean, in all my life growing up on the island, I had never even seen a police car. There was a station in the village, but it always just sat empty, acting only as a staging post if ever needed – and it certainly didn’t have its own police car. The nearest permanent station was thirty minutes away.
This was bad luck in the extreme.
The car pulled me over, and the officer told me to get in the back: ‘Sharpish!’
I jumped in, tried to explain, but was told to be quiet. I was nicked.
I did eventually make it home after doing some serious explaining that I was not a streaker or a pervert. I even showed them my blood-red groin rub as proof.
Finally, they let me off with a caution.
So there you have it: I had been arrested for nudity, flunked my exams, and failed at getting a girlfriend – but I had a hunger for adventure and the love of a great family in my soul.
I was as ready, as I could ever be, for my entrance into the big bad world.
CHAPTER 29
My first summer after leaving school I realized that my priority, if I was to get to travel and adventure and see something of the world, was to earn some money.
I had always been encouraged to be an entrepreneur from when I was very young, whether it was getting paid to do a paper round in the Isle of Wight or trying to sell home-brewed cider made from apple juice at school. (Great recipe, thanks, Watty.)
So I set out to make a buck … selling my mother’s water filters, door to door. It was hard, thankless work, but I found that a sufficient number of my parents’ friends were encouraging enough at least to give me half an hour of their time, to demonstrate the benefits of non-chlorinated water.
Ill-fitting tap attachments that squirted water over many an immaculate kitchen cost me a considerable amount of my profits, but I persevered, and over a summer I managed to earn enough money to get a ticket to go InterRailing around Europe.
I slept on trains and explored many of the European cities. But I soon got quite depressed by the traffic and noise of one city after another.
In Berlin, not wanting to carry my heavy backpack into the city centre after dark, I had hidden my belongings behind a row of dustbins, whilst I went for an explore. Upon returning, I found a tramp huddled over in the dark, rifling through my bags.
I shouted at him and ran towards both my pack and him.
At this point he pulled out the diving knife that I had in my bag and started brandishing it at me wildly. Luckily he was far too drunk to be able to use the knife, and I managed to disarm him and recover it in one relatively tidy move. But the fear and adrenalin of the situation then hit me, and I grabbed my pack and just ran.
That was the final straw for me. I had had it with grey, northern European cities, and sleeping on train station platforms.
I reckoned it was time to hit the beach.
I asked around for where the best beach-resort in Europe was, accessible by train, and the name St Tropez kept coming up.
Perfect.
St Tropez is a small French town, renowned as the beach hangout for the rich and famous, on the southern coast of France. At this stage I was definitely not rich (in fact I was getting poorer by the day now), and was definitely not famous; but undeterred, I headed south – and instantly felt better.
As I pulled into town, the grey of Berlin felt a million miles away. My funds, though, were by now running severely low, and I soon discovered that St Tropez was not the place to find cheap lodgings. But I was determined that this was the place to hang out for the last week, until I headed home again.
I found a quiet back street, running behind the town’s church bell tower.
I glanced up.
A solid-looking drainpipe ran up to the first level of roofing, and from there a lightning conductor ran straight up the vertical wall to the bell tower itself.
How I love lightning conductors.
I checked that no one was watching, then steadily shimmied up the drainpipe and the lightning conductor, before wriggling over into the bell tower itself, some hundred feet up – high above the town.
It was the perfect campsite. I had a spectacular view over the coastline, and could watch and listen to the hustle and bustle of the seaside restaurants below. There was just about enough room to lie down and I carefully unpacked and made the eight foot by eight foot concrete space my new home.
The two flaws in my plan were, first of all, the many pigeons that had also made the bell tower their dwelling, and, secondly, the bell that rang every hour, two inches from my head. The former I just had to live with (in fact, I thought at least I could find dinner easily, in the form of a pigeon, if my money completely ran out), but the latter, the tolling of the bells, became unbearable.
At 3 a.m. on the first night, with the help of my torch, I found the fuse-box for the automatic bell, and put a temporary end to the town’s clock, and from then on slept like a baby.
By day, I swam for hours around the beautiful bays and along the beaches, and I then wandered aimlessly through the small streets and drank tea in cafés.
It was heaven.
But soon my funds really did run out, and I kind of knew that it was time to head back to the UK.
I had promised I would first join my good friend Stan on a road trip to Romania to help a small church build an orphanage there. Romania was a firmly Eastern European country at that stage, and poverty was both widespread and visible.
The mission was life-changing for me in many ways, and was such an eye-opener to how fortunate we are in the UK.
We were welcomed as brothers into the homes of members of the church and by day we helped physically build the orphanage. We laid bricks and shifted sand, and in the evenings we helped with local outreach events to support the small church. This was mainly geared at helping and welcoming in the local gypsies, who were treated as outcasts by most of the resident population.
I learnt during this trip that I had no right ever to grumble at my own circumstances and that I should always try to be grateful and hospitable wherever I can. Above all, I will always remember the kindness and warmth I was shown from those who had so little.
I have since witnessed so much of this generosity and kindness from people all over the world, and it never fails to bring me up short.
It tends to shine a light on my own, all too often, self-inflated ego.
Guilty as charged.
CHAPTER 30
One of my closest friends in my life is someone I met aged sixteen, and we just kind of always got on.
Charlie Mackesy is a good few years older than me but you would never have known it from the antics we got up to.
During this first year after school, when I rented a small room in my sister’s flat, Charlie and I hung out a lot together in London.
We endlessly messed about, hanging upside down at the local parks’ monkey bars, making giant bacon, avocado and tomato sandwiches, and devouring Ribena juice cartons by the multitude – in an effort to
win the £5,000 prize you got if you happened to drink the carton that contained the magic ‘Harry the Lime’ toy inside.
And that has kind of been our friendship ever since.
He is godfather to my first son, Jesse, and he was the best man at Shara’s and my wedding. (I am still waiting to be his – come on girls, get with the programme – he is a serious catch!)
Charlie helped me, at a very formative age, to understand that there are no prizes for taking either yourself or life too seriously, and that life should be lived freely. Charlie was the first buddy I had met who really lived the way I enjoyed. He also wore messy clothes, slept outside a lot, laughed at ridiculous things and hung upside down in trees.
Not much has changed really, over the years – we both have maybe a few more grey hairs, and I hope we both behave marginally better, but through it all, our friendship has grown stronger as we have both been rolled and rocked by the boat of life.
Old friends are wonderful, aren’t they? There is nothing to explain.
I recently asked Charlie to try and remember some of his favourite stories from that year after school we spent together. And they vary from the sublime to the very ridiculous.
Like the time we built our own circus trapeze swing in the garden, and I hung by my legs upside down, and then had the rope snap, dropping me down right on my head from quite some height. (Charlie said he heard the loud crack of vertebrae crumpling and was certain I was dead – but somehow I walked away from it.)
Then there was the day we both raided my sister Lara’s very expensive ‘Dead Sea mud pack’, that she had bought several years earlier, but had never been able to bring herself to use. We covered ourselves, head to toe, in this gloop, and fell asleep on the grass, waking with a start when she came back, red with rage.