'Can I eat this?" asks a boy of about 12, picking up a live beetle and showing it to his dad. We're in the car park - the Bear Grylls family survival course hasn't even started and children are already volunteering to eat insects. It's the first sign my daughter Phoebe, 10, and I might be in over our heads.
I'm not an outdoorsy person. The last time I camped, I slept in the car when the airbed deflated. I had agreed to this commission on a boat in the Mediterranean without the wifi to research it. I had some dim idea Bear Grylls was a slightly cooler version of Terry Nutkins and I knew the course was set on the 500-acre Whithorn Estate in Brook, Surrey. Nothing bad happens in Surrey, right? We'd maybe cook sausages on an open fire, I thought, whittle pointed sticks and learn how to find the North Star. It would compensate for the lack of camping in my daughter's life - only someone else would be in charge of erecting the tents.
Half an hour later, Scott Heffield, Bear's right-hand man (Bear's away filming), is ordering us to daub mud all over our faces and arms to block out our natural smells. He barks at us: "One of you will be injured. A sprained ankle, a burn, a knife cut. It's going to happen, survivors. SAS POSITION!" As taught, we brace to defend ourselves from a potential wolf/bear/lion attack. "Now into the forest. One, two, three, four…" Carrying our huge rucksacks, we follow. Phoebe has a trainer sucked off her foot in the mud. After another stumble into brambles, I am picking her up when she looks at me and says, with city-girl hurt: "Daddy, you said this was camping!"
But worse follows. Soon we're crossing a river on a commando rope (my chest a week later is still - I kid you not - hot to the touch from rope burn). We are purifying rat-infested river water by filtering it through an old sock.
Then there's knife skills conducted by John, a former Parachute Regiment sniper, who will later reveal the secret of his job is "patience and control. And escape in the ensuing panic when the high-value target goes down." On similar courses, he says, children aren't permitted hunting knives for insurance reasons. "But Bear thinks kids should be able to do the things we did as kids," says John.
He sharpens a stick, cutting away from his hip, explaining about the "triangle of death" between the knees and groin that could result in a "bleed out" if the femoral artery is nicked. We'll be using knives later, he says. I don't even let my daughter use the bread knife at home. She is only just trusted with the kettle. I look at the other dads. There are five, all with sons older than my daughter. No reaction.
Farther into the woods Scott unearths mealworms under rotten bark. "Don't swallow them whole or they'll chew your insides before your stomach acids digest them," he says, placing one on each of our tongues.
"What?" says Phoebe. I'm the sort of man who takes his favourite pillow with him whenever he sleeps away from home. I'm so fussy I don't eat eggs, pasta or fish. Phoebe stares at me. Everyone else swallows their mealworm. Some boys ask for more. Somehow I get it down. What's more, so does my daughter. "Woody," she says, like a wine critic appraising a cheeky new number from the Napa Valley.
After learning foraging berry rhymes ("Yellow and white, dead in the night. Black and blue, good for you"), it's dropline fishing.
While Phoebe whittles a twig to support our line with the sort of hunting knife you normally only see in evidence bags on the news,
I collect thorns to be used as hooks and worry about the triangle of death, occasionally calling out: "Phoebe, remember your femoral artery."
This nannying further marks me out as the outsider. The other dads are fitter; some have tough jobs, such as police hostage negotiator; while others already know how to tell which way north is from how moss grows on trees. I haven't excelled physically. I fell off the commando rope (the only dad to do so), I tangled our net up fishing and, right now, I can't follow Scott's instructions. We have to make an alpine butterfly knot.
"Little Phoebe's got it," says Scott.
"How'd you do that?" I ask. "Through here?"
"Round and up," says Phoebe.
"Up?"
"Round and up."
"Show me again."
"Daddy, listen!"
With even my daughter despairing of me, we build a fern and stick shelter to sleep in. Phoebe and I desperately gather bracken to soften the hard earth and cover the frame to keep out the rain. When we return to the camp, we discover a dead rabbit hanging from a tree. Our dinner. Round the camp fire, John says that the real secret of survival is positivity. The meal is prepared. One of the rabbit's legs is snapped in half. An instructor forces a knife into the gap between the broken bones and, using it for leverage, tears off the animal's fur like he is reupholstering a cushion. Young Bear fans fight over who gets to chop off the remaining limbs.
"I feel sorry for the rabbit," I whisper to Phoebe. Until the age of 8, she wanted to be one. She spent her first six birthday parties in rabbit costumes. I'm worried how she is taking this.
"If we don't eat it, its life is wasted," she tells me, earnestly, and I notice when the instructor holds up a severed foot and asks who wants to keep it for good luck, she also puts her hand up.
While the bunny cooks, we don head-torches and go for a Blair Witch Project-style tramp through the woods to master astral navigation. I walk into a tree.
After our rabbit dinner and chicken stew, eaten from a ration mug, we retire to our shelters at 1am. There are strange noises. The hoot of an owl. The choke of a fox. Phoebe's head-torch breaks when I panic and thrash about at the sight of a giant millipede in my sleeping bag. Occasionally we hear a train on the Guildford-to-London line. It's the only comforting reminder of the world left behind.
"Have you seen the harness in our packs? We're going to have to climb something tomorrow," I tell Phoebe, sorrowfully.
"Think of Sunday lunch," she says. "When we get home."
"Positivity?"
She nods and pats my head. Soon Phoebe is snoring and I'm alone. The smell of fern reminds me of childhood. I close my eyes but hear more unfamiliar noises. A chut chut getting closer. A badger? A rat? Things crawl across my cold face and I don't sleep until I see sunlight through the trees.
After an army ration breakfast that is less appetising than the mealworms, John gathers us in a circle. "Bear likes to start the day with half an hour's PT," he says.
"I thought he might," I whisper to Phoebe.
That morning we abseil down a seven metre drop. Sunday lunch. We cross rivers on fallen trees. Sunday lunch. The final challenge is wading through a neck-deep stagnant pond fully clothed. Sunday lunch. The mud is knee-deep. The cold takes my breath away. But on the other side Land Rovers return us to HQ. Here, before we leave, Scott presents us with certificates and tells us about Bear's harder course on Dartmoor.
"We skinned a rabbit," shouts Phoebe on the phone to my wife on the way home.
"We ate worms," I chip in.
Back home we eat Sunday lunch. We have baths. I feel proud now. I tell everyone what we did. Nobody believes I ate a worm. I pass on survival tips.
"No millipedes tonight," I say, tucking Phoebe in at bedtime.
"Or badgers," she says.
I go to leave the room. "Daddy," she says, calling me back, "it was fun just you and me."
"Wasn't it?" I say, agreeing, because in a way, retrospectively, it was.
"SAS position!" she shouts, and I flex my arms. She smiles. I leave the room feeling like a good dad who does things with his children - but, walking downstairs, I pretend I can't hear Phoebe as she says: "We could do the Dartmoor course next."
Bear Grylls Survival Academy (+44 1483 424 438; beargryllssurvivalacademy.com) offers 24-hour family courses in Surrey, Shropshire, Brecon and Dartmoor for £429 for two places (child and adult).
The courses run from noon until noon and include meals, selected kit and accommodation. Each is limited to 12 places (six pairs), although one place per course can be reserved for an adult with two children. Children must be aged between 10 and 17 years, and both parent and child must be physically active.
The Telegraph, London
