Swimming with Sharks @ Bear Grylls Adventure (& 10% discount code)

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” If you’re as familiar with that quote as Mr Trips is, you may understand how excited he was for this opportunity that I mentioned in my last entry about the Bear Grylls Adventure. That’s right! He’s going swimming with Sharks! (for those of you confused, the opening quote is the most famous line from Jaws….)

So, we were invited back to Bear’s place for the official launch day. Bear himself was there to cut the ribbon, right after fast-roping down from the back of a helicopter in a cloud of smoke escorted by two Royal Marines, to some VERY dramatic music. I took my friend Megs photo with him.

Also knocking about the place for the launch was Ben Jardine and Gabby Allen, recently from Big Brother, along with Karen Danzcuk and Saleyha Ahsan who have been on Bear’s survival show, The Island. If you jump on our Instagram page @smallhousebigtrips you can see a video of Ben Jardine doing some of the assault course. Here’s the first section.

We had a bit of a wait until Mr Trips and our friend Meg went for their dip, so we had a look around the place.

That very day they had a Virtual Reality Paragliding simulator installed. The machine, built by Frontgrid (@frontgrid, only on twitter currently) works with a VR headset combined with a hanging seat that can pull you up and down around 12 foot in the air and looks like great fun. Mr Trips had a go, but he was rubbish and flew into a mountain! It was very popular, with a queue waiting for pretty much the entire time we were there.

Next to the Parasailing VR was an upper strength challenge. Hang by your hands, from a bar for 2 minutes. Manage that and you win a Bear Grylls prize! We were around when we saw Ben Jardine do it. He didn’t last the full two minutes, but he did beat his friend.

So lets tell you a bit about the Sharks. Set in a giant aquarium, the tank is home to over a thousand rescued animals from the sea. The black tip reef sharks are of the not-munch-on-humans variety, and share their home with a collection of cownose rays, moray eels, a massive grouper and an even bigger Starry Pufferfish. There is 13 of the sharks in there, and the moray eels were a new addition to the tank, just that week.

We had taken up the offer of scuba diving in the tank. You also have the option of snorkelling, but Mr Trips has always wanted to try scuba diving, so there was no way that he was going to let that opportunity pass him by. The team at the Bear Grylls Adventure have made the dive area really look the part.

It is decorated as if you have walked on to an old fishing trawler or an oil rig or something. Before you’re even allowed to think about getting in that water, the highly trained and very experienced staff at the dive experience make sure that you’re familiar enough with the equipment that you are about use. For around half an hour you’re in a small classroom learning how the scuba rig works and how to conduct yourself whilst visiting our fishy friends. You are taught how to breathe underwater using the mouthpiece, how to retrieve it if it somehow escapes your mouth and how to let out any water that gets inside your face-mask. With the forms all filled out and plenty of medical exception boxes ticked, Mr Trips was issued his wet-suit and boots and off he went to shower the gloop out of his hair and have a good wash so that the sensitive creatures he was about to visit wouldn’t have a reaction to his aftershave or something. He tells me that getting a wet-suit on is not very easy.

All sealed up, he was first into the training tank (He’s always volunteering to be first at these things!) to have his gear strapped to him, by Chris the instructor. Whilst the water is cold at first, it doesn’t take long to get used to it. Once everybody else was in, they practised the skills and techniques they had talked about in the room.

Mr Trips told me it was odd forcing himself to breathe underwater, with all of his instincts telling him to hold his breath making himself calmly breathing in and out took quite an effort and some time for him to get used to. The group passed their exam with flying colours (I’m not sure I could do it, who would willingly chuck away your only air supply underwater in order to try and find it and put it back?) and were guided towards the steps that take them down into the tank you can look in from the lobby.

All the way down you’re encouraged to take it slowly and let your ears adjust. You know how being on a plane makes your ears pop? You get that in there, so you have to go slow to equalise the pressure.

The tank has been thoughtfully designed with plenty of hidey-holes for all the fishes and eels that make it their home. Once getting to the tank floor you’re struck by the amount of life that is around you. Little angel fish and lipstick fish all around you. You get taken on a slow walk around the tank with your trainer leading the way and pointing out creatures of interest. The moray eels are scary looking chaps and a couple of them had made their home in the walls as you started your walk, poking their heads out to keep an eye as you slowly drift by. It is here that the folk outside can see you going by, and Mr Trips had a little audience of folk taking pictures. He says one person was doing a Facebook live, or an Instagram story using the tank as a backdrop, so he got in the shot and started waving and playing for the camera. If that was you, I do apologise.

It seems the sharks are pretty uninterested in you. They kept their distance and didn’t come too close. The rays are very friendly though, and don’t mind coming over to have a look at you. Apparently they like the way the bubbles from the tanks tickle their tummies, so they like to glide over the top of the divers when they’re in. A couple of angelfish took a shine to Meg and started butting her goggles, which was funny. The tanks grouper fish came out to have a look and floated quite close to the group. He was a big guy, bigger than Mr Trips’ head. He says (Mr Trips, not the grouper) that its peaceful in there, that once you’re used to breathing through your mouth and the noise that come with it, the fact that you can’t really communicate with anyone comes home to you, and for him, it was very relaxing.

Mr Trips was underwater for around twenty minutes or so before being directed back to the surface, where he was helped out of his tank and sent back to change. After he had won his fight against the wet wet-suit and got dressed, he found Chris waiting for him, filling out a log book for him. If Mr Trips ever fancies learning properly the time he spent in the tank here, will go towards that qualification, which I thought was a really nice touch. Chris also spent some time talking about the sharks and what the centre is trying to do, to raise awareness of sharks and the dangers to them and their habitat. The Bear Grylls Adventure is donating money from every dive to the Shark Trust in order to support the work they do.

It is safe to say that Mr Trips loved his time learning to scuba dive and swimming with the fishes. It is so cool having something in Birmingham that allows a little taster of something like this at an accessible and relatively affordable price. Perfect for someones birthday surprise.

We’d really recommend it, and if you do fancy it we have a link for 10% off booking experiences at the Bear Grylls Adventure if you go via this link http://www.beargryllsadventure.com/birmingham/adventuredeal

If you do go, let us know what you thought!