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c5b1267
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Their hands were also huge - two massive leathery mitts that looked like hairy wicket keeper's gloves.
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Bear Grylls |
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39e567a
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they are never sufficiently tested. This means I've got two good pieces of news for you. The first is that whenever you do something beyond your 'comfort zone' and realize you are still standing, the more you will believe that the impossible is actually possible. And on the road to success, belief is everything. And the second piece of news is that we all have much further to push ourselves than we might initially imagine. Inside us all, ju..
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Bear Grylls |
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eba1074
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Most people never reach their limit because they are never sufficiently tested. This means I've got two good pieces of news for you. The first is that whenever you do something beyond your 'comfort zone' and realize you are still standing, the more you will believe that the impossible is actually possible. And on the road to success, belief is everything. And the second piece of news is that we all have much further to push ourselves than w..
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Bear Grylls |
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825642b
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Our achievements are generally limited only by the beliefs we impose on ourselves. If we tell ourselves often enough that we don't have what it takes, then that will inevitably become our reality. But I also knew if I could somehow replace my doubt with hope, my fear with courage, and my self-pity with a sense of pride, then I just might be able to do this. It would involve paying a huge price in sweat and hard work; it would involve having..
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Bear Grylls |
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0c57a53
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But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction. Usually they are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men might have. Determination and faith are their strongest weapons. At best such men are regarded as eccentric; at worst, mad . . . Three things these men have in common: faith in themselves, great determination and endurance. *
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Bear Grylls |
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1fcce43
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We could see base camp below us, and my breathing was becoming more and more excited. I felt as though an entire lifetime had passed since I had last been here. The tents shimmered in the sun as we hurried through the jumbled ice at the foot of the icefall. At 12:05 P.M. we unclipped from the last rope for the final time. I looked back at the tumbling, broken glacier and shook my head in disbelief. Quietly, and to myself, I thanked the moun..
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Bear Grylls |
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a6c3f2d
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I was so proud to have been made a lieutenant-commander in the Royal Navy in 2005 (Dad would have approved!), and through the expeditions that I have led in Antarctica, the Himalayas, and the Arctic, we have now raised more than $2.5 million for children's charities around the world. Those things really matter to me. Especially when you can actually see lives saved. There's not much tough-guy nonsense going on when I hear those young kids' ..
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Bear Grylls |
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472cb5d
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When did all this craziness become my world? It's as if--almost accidentally--this madness has become my life. And don't get me wrong--I love it all. The game, though, now, is to hang on to that life. Every day is the most wonderful of blessings, and a gift that I never, ever take for granted. Oh, and as for the scars, broken bones, aching limbs, and sore back? I consider them just gentle reminders that life is precious--and that maybe, ju..
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Bear Grylls |
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6df111f
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If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere." The dude who said this was dead right. Life is all about getting up again, dusting yourself down again, learning from the lessons, and then pushing on. And I did."
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Bear Grylls |
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e76660b
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There's a verse in the Gospel of Matthew that - regardless of your religious beliefs - we would do well to remember when we find our feet getting a little too big for our boots:
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Bear Grylls |
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300166d
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So get out your paddle, take a deep breath, smile and get going. And watch the journey unfold. You are now living the adventure for real, master of your own destiny. You are no longer waiting for someone else to help you out; you are not expecting to be handed something on a plate. Now you understand the phrase: 'If it is to be, it is up to me.' It feels good, eh? Doing it yourself. Paddling your very own canoe. Now it is all about hanging..
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Bear Grylls |
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ff904d9
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So much happened, though, in our early, prechildren days, that served to turn our life around irretrievably. Much of it came from small, serendipitous, unlikely turns of events--like driving for many hours to do a small Everest talk for a charity and finding out afterward that the young son of the head of Channel 4 (the large UK TV network) was there. He then told his dad that I should do a TV show for the network. Kids, eh? Or getting spot..
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Bear Grylls |
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466a940
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Pretty soon after returning from Everest, I was asked to give a lecture on the Everest expedition to my local sailing club in the Isle of Wight. It would be the first of many lectures that I would eventually give, and would soon become my main source of income after returning from the mountain. Those early talks were pretty ropey, though, by anyone's standards. That first one went okay, mainly due to the heavy number of family members in th..
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Bear Grylls |
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480e888
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I finally persuaded the University of the West of England (UWE) (which was the less academic version of Bristol University) to offer me a place studying modern languages. (Incidentally, I had only pulled this off by going down there in person and begging the admissions lady for a place, face-to-face, after sitting outside her office all day. This was becoming a familiar pattern. Well, at least, I have always been persistent.) I wasn't allow..
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Bear Grylls |
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25e8723
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During the year before Shara and I got married, I managed to persuade the owners of a small island, situated in Poole Harbor, to let me winter house-sit the place in return for free lodging. It was a brilliant deal. Chopping logs, keeping an eye on the place, doing a bit of maintenance, and living like a king on a beautiful twenty-acre island off the south coast of England. Some months earlier, I had been walking along a riverbank outside o..
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Bear Grylls |
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8833006
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At this stage, I was also living a pretty unhealthy lifestyle. I was eating too much, smoking, and drinking (which is always daft), and not training at all. Predictably, I piled on the pounds and looked pretty rough. But I just wanted to get away from fitness and training and being focused and all of that. I wanted a life. Away from the military, away from the mountains, away from pressure. All through university, while my friends had playe..
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Bear Grylls |
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efad0fc
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Rozhlizel se kolem po nejakem kameni, kterym by se zabil. Zadny vsak nenasel. Musel to utrpeni vydrzet.
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Bear Grylls |
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3a73452
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Sedmkrat spadni, osmkrat se zvedni.
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Bear Grylls |
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9015064
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Slova Edwarda Whympera jsou pravdiva dodnes: ,,Lez, jestli te to bavi, ale pamatuj si, ze odvaha a sila neznamenaji bez opatrnosti nic... S nicim nepospichej, davej pozor na kazdy krok a od zacatku mysli na to, ze tohle muze byt i konec.
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Bear Grylls |
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eb37c65
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Mallory tesil postaveni celebrity. Kdyz se ho jeden reporter New York Times zeptal, proc chce zdolat Everest, George odpovedel tremi slavnymi slovy, jez znaji snad vsichni horolezci. Tato slova jsou tlukoucim srdcem, mottem pohanejicim mnoho odvaznych pruzkumniku a dobrodruhu. ,,Protoze tam je.
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Bear Grylls |
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0d1e92c
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For eighteen hours we had neither drunk nor eaten anything. My body and mind both felt strangely distant. Both were aching for some relief. In the porch of our tiny single-skinned tent, I reached out to hug Neil again. Then--unceremoniously--I collapsed. "Bear, come on, buddy. You've got to get inside the tent properly. Bear, can you hear me?" Michael's voice brought me round. He had been waiting for us at the col--hoping. I shuffled backwa..
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Bear Grylls |
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81903f3
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Zkouseli jste nekdy vyhrabat ze snehu auto? No tak zkuste vyhrabat lod z antarktickeho ledu.
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Bear Grylls |
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4b74f09
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So suddenly here we are. Six years on. I genuinely never believed we would film more than six episodes of , let alone six seasons. I mean, where has the time gone? I also really had no idea quite how many hellholes, remote jungles, stinking swamps, searing deserts, and forbidding, unexplored mountain ranges we have on this small planet of ours. People forget. Me included.
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Bear Grylls |
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77d9b5a
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Just before my accident, I had met a great girl who was a student at Cambridge. With my newly found wheels, I used to ride like a lunatic up the motorway to see her after our final evening parade at the rehab center. I would take her out for dinner, sleep over, and then get up at 4:00 A.M. to race the two hours back down to Headley Court and morning parade. The staff had no idea. No one, they imagined, could be that stupid. It was often so ..
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Bear Grylls |
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e978517
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Along the way, though, I was always careful not to get greedy or to go for the quick buck--despite the temptations in the early days. Financially, it was hard saying no to big appearance fees from TV shows like or --but I always had the long goal in mind and tried to keep the main thing the main thing. And not get distracted by fluff. Instead, know your strengths. I also tended instinctively to shy away from both TV and the whole concept..
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Bear Grylls |
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c377776
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One thing I am clear on, though, is why the show has been so successful. I consider it is down to the magic three: good fortune, an amazing team, and a willingness to risk it all. My magic trio. There is no doubt that good fortune and blessed timing have been at the heart of why the program has worked. All too often I meet extraordinarily talented people: whether they are world-class climbers, champion skydivers, or survival-bushcraft gur..
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Bear Grylls |
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9c61c54
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When a TV show starts out, it is incredibly competitive: maybe one in a hundred TV ideas goes on to get made into pilot (tester) episodes. Maybe one in twenty of those pilots will go on to have a first series commissioned. And maybe one in ten of those will be asked back for a second season. It takes a sprinkling of fairy dust and a lot of goodwill. But do two seasons and you will quite probably go on to do five--or more. So we got lucky. ..
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Bear Grylls |
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f8e95c8
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Going through this phase, though, did confirm in my mind that at least Shara wasn't marrying me for either my looks or money. I was both broke and bloated. She, bless her, still loved me all the same.
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Bear Grylls |
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ceb9754
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Our wedding took place on a blustery midwinter day. The fifteenth of January 2000. Yet the sun shone through the clouds brightly. Shara's father, Brian, who so sadly was suffering with multiple sclerosis, gave her away from his wheelchair in the church. Brian cried. Shara cried. Everyone cried. We left the church to our friends singing a cappella versions of "Hey, Hey, We're the Monkees" and "I'm a Believer." I was the happiest I had ever ..
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Bear Grylls |
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dd5c9dc
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Several months earlier Shara and I had bought a home together. Well, to be more accurate it was a barge, moored on the Thames in central London. Neil had spotted it for us, and we looked around it straight away. I instantly loved it. We had previously been quite close to putting in an offer on a tiny, poky studio flat in London--but deep down I was concerned. For a start, I couldn't really afford it. Dad had offered to help me secure a mort..
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Bear Grylls |
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63f264b
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On one occasion, after a particularly long spell away from home, I got Shara to fly into the mountains we were filming in. "Bring the boys, my love, I miss you." That night, I hitched a lift with the crew, jumped into the helicopter that was extracting them back to base, and went to the lodge they were staying in. Shara was there, waiting. I spent the night in my family's arms and went back to film the next day. Reckless, I know. But the pr..
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Bear Grylls |
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5f843fd
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The day after our wedding, we flew off on honeymoon. I had recklessly waited until two days before our wedding to book the holiday, in the hope that I would get some great last-minute deal somewhere. Always a dangerous tactic. I pretended to Shara that it was a surprise. But, predictably, those "great deals" were a bit thin on the ground that week. The best I could find was a one-star package holiday, at a resort near Cancun in Mexico. It w..
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Bear Grylls |
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a0405de
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We opened the door and looked at each other. Surprised. It was literally like stepping into a deep freeze. Old iron boats are like that in winter. The cold water around them means that, without heating, they are Baltically cold. We fumbled our way, still all wrapped up, into the bowels of the boat and the boiler room. Shara looked at me, then at the silent, cold boiler. No doubt she questioned how smart both choices had really been.
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Bear Grylls |
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7185d4b
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So there we were. No money, and freezing cold--but happy and together. That night, all wrapped up in blankets, I made a simple promise to Shara: I would love her and look after her, every day of our life together--and along the way we would have one hell of an adventure. Little did either of us realize, but this was really just the beginning.
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Bear Grylls |
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917da1e
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My granny Patsie Fisher
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Bear Grylls |
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74f88fc
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The second element to why the show has worked is undoubtedly my team. And guess what? I am not alone out there. I work with a truly brilliant, small tight-knit crew. Four or five guys. Heroes to a man. They work their nuts off. Unsung. Up to their necks in the dirt. Alongside me in more hellholes than you could ever imagine. They are mainly made up of ex-Special Forces buddies and top adventure cameramen--as tough as they come, and best fri..
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Bear Grylls |
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2a1cc79
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The final magic ingredient has been a willingness to risk it all. All in. No questions asked. The program started, and grew, from a determination to push the boundaries. Do the impossible. Climb the impassable--eat the inedible. Of course, there was often a safer, easier way down the waterfall or cliff face. But I rarely took it. That wasn't my aim. I wanted to show you how to survive when you have no safe options. And I loved it. I had lea..
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Bear Grylls |
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ff1a7e4
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I have been so lucky to lead amazing teams to incredible places: the remote Venezuelan jungles of the "Lost World" in search of Jimmy Angel's lost gold; or the remote white desert that is Antarctica to climb unclimbed peaks. (I managed to break my shoulder in a fall on that trip, but you can't win them all!) Then we returned to the Himalayas, where my buddy Gilo and I flew powered paragliders to above the height of Everest. Once again, we w..
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Bear Grylls |
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a0bed55
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There has been one further element to success, and that is its underlying message. I believe it is actually the biggest factor. If you think about it, at heart, there is such a strong link between survival and life. I mean, we are all in a battle of some sort, aren't we? Surviving. It feels like day by day sometimes. But talent, skill, and luck are only a part of what carries people through. A small part. There is a bigger element that se..
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Bear Grylls |
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02dbf34
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A young kid came up to me in the street a few days ago. He looked me square in the eye and asked me: "If you could tell me one survival message, what would it be?" I thought about it for a moment. I wanted to give him a decent answer. Then I saw it very clearly. "Smile when it's raining, and when you're going through hell--keep going." The boy thought for a moment. Then he looked up at me and said: "It rains a lot where I live." We all know..
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Bear Grylls |
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a50d327
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Among these have been an unhealthy number of near-death moments, many of which I look back on now and wince. But I guess our training in life never really ends--and experience is always the best tutor of all. Then there are the most bizarre: like jet-skiing around Britain in aid of the UK lifeboats. Day after day, hour after hour, pounding the seas like little ants battling around the wild coast of Scotland and Irish Sea. (I developed a wei..
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Bear Grylls |
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e57aca0
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The Royal Marines description of me as "happy-go-lucky" is good for many things, but somehow it doesn't wash with university applications. And with my mediocre A level results I was getting a hefty number of rejections winging my way. A lot of my good friends were heading to Bristol University. But I had as much change of getting in there with my ACDC grades as Deborah Maldives had of winning a beauty pageant." --
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Bear Grylls |
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480e456
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Slowly my movement returned and the pain lessened, until, by the time I left the center some eight months after the accident, I really was on the mend. I knew I was getting better when I sneaked out one night, caught a train home, collected my 1200 cc motorbike, and, still strapped up in my metal back brace, rode the bike back to Headley Court before dawn. The nurses would have gone nuts if they could have seen me, but my motorbike was my i..
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Bear Grylls |
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54a2b84
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Eventually, at 7:22 A.M. on the morning of May 26, 1998, with tears still pouring down my frozen cheeks, the summit of Mount Everest opened her arms and welcomed me in. As if she now considered me somehow worthy of this place. My pulse raced, and in a haze I found myself suddenly standing on top of the world. Alan embraced me, mumbling excitedly into his mask. Neil was still staggering toward us. As he approached, the wind began to die away..
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Bear Grylls |