A Bear Grylls Adventure 5

  Contents

  Title Page

  The Bear Grylls Adventures series

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Five-Metre Boy

  Chapter 2: Control Point

  Chapter 3: River Wild

  Chapter 4: One Small Step

  Chapter 5: Beastly Encounter

  Chapter 6: Eating Out

  Chapter 7: Bamboo Building Blocks

  Chapter 8: Riding the River

  Chapter 9: Floating With Attitude

  Chapter 10: Stumped

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The BEAR GRYLLS ADVENTURES series

  The Blizzard Challenge

  The Desert Challenge

  The Jungle Challenge

  The Sea Challenge

  The River Challenge

  The Earthquake Challenge

  To the young survivor reading this book for the first time. May your eyes always be wide open to adventure, and your heart full of courage and determination to see your dreams through.

  1

  FIVE-METRE BOY

  Jack stood a safe couple of metres away from the water, and turned the stone over in his fingers. It was light and flat.

  “Okay,” he said. “Here goes.”

  “You need to stand closer,” his friend Joe interrupted.

  Jack shook his head. “Here’s fine, thanks.”

  The boys were on the gravel shore by the lake at Camp. Out on the water a dinghy sailing session was going on.

  Jack’s stone was just the right size for him to wrap his thumb and first finger around. He drew his arm back, and flicked his wrist. The stone shot out of his fingers like a tiny Frisbee. Its spinning flat surface hit the water – and it bounced. The stone skipped across the lake away from Jack and he counted every splash it made before it finally sank.

  “Nine! Record!” Jack shouted happily.

  “Fluke,” Joe said with an easy grin. He looked over at their friend. “Hey, you going to join in, Charlie?”

  “Mmph.”

  Charlie was Joe’s tent-mate. He was sulking with his hands in his pockets. Jack and Joe both knew he would rather be guiding a space fighter through a field of asteroids than skimming stones. Unfortunately for Charlie, his tablet was charging in the leaders’ office, where it had to stay during activity time.

  Joe and Jack rolled their eyes at each other.

  “Okay, my turn,” Joe said. “Stand by for excellence.”

  Joe carefully wrapped his fingers around his stone, poised, and threw.

  “… seven … eight … nine … TEN!” Joe grinned with delight. “Think you can top that?”

  “No probs,” Jack replied.

  But Jack knew that it would take some beating. He needed to find the perfect stone. He wanted the flattest, roundest stone he could find. But he carefully stayed near the top of the beach as he searched, and tried not to make it look like he was avoiding the water.

  So Jack didn’t notice Joe sidle over to Charlie and murmur something in his ear. Joe and Charlie strolled casually down the beach until they were standing on either side of Jack.

  Then Joe grinned and looked sideways at Charlie. “Get him!”

  Charlie and Joe grabbed Jack’s arms and started to haul him towards the water.

  “Hey, no! Cut it out! Cut it out!” Jack yelled. He dug his feet in and tried to pull back. “Get off! Get off me!”

  The other two only pulled harder.

  “Come on, Jack!” Charlie shouted happily. “Dunking time!”

  “No! No!” Jack screamed. “ Get off!”

  He could feel panic rising as he struggled. The water was right ahead, waiting to swallow him up.

  “Oi! Lads!” One of the sailing instructors shouted across from the lake. “Knock it off!”

  Joe and Charlie slackened off a bit. Jack pulled himself free immediately and ran back up the beach until he was a safe distance from the water.

  “What were you doing?” he yelled.

  The other boys stared at him. The smiles on their faces were fading as they realised how upset he was.

  “Gee, sorry,” Joe mumbled. “It was just a bit of fun. You know, just to get your feet wet.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Charlie asked. “You can swim, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can swim!” Jack shouted.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem … the problem is …” Jack spluttered.

  He knew what the problem was. He just couldn’t put it into words, because he knew how stupid it would sound if he did.

  Jack hated water.

  He could swim – he had his five-metre badge to prove it. But he had never got further than five metres, because after that the pool at school got too deep to stand in, so he’d always managed to find excuses to miss lessons.

  Jack gave up trying to explain.

  “We were playing a good game,” he complained. “Why did you have to go and spoil it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Charlie said sincerely.

  “I didn’t know you’d mind,” Joe added.

  “Yeah, well, just leave it, okay,” Jack muttered. “See you later.”

  Jack knew he would forgive them. They were his friends and he could tell they hadn’t meant to hurt him. It had just been a stupid joke.

  But right now he was embarrassed and felt silly. He didn’t want to be with them, or anywhere near the water, so he walked away.

  2

  CONTROL POINT

  Jack jogged through the woods, with a map in one hand and a compass in the other. Joe ran alongside him, happy to let Jack do the map-reading. Charlie was with them too, lagging a bit behind. They were friends again.

  Jack’s embarrassment yesterday hadn’t lasted long. He’d helped a girl called Chloe rescue a chick that had fallen out of its nest by the lake. Chloe had been given a Wildlife Welfare badge, and Jack had made a new friend. And Chloe had given him something to say ‘thank you’ – a compass.

  Then Jack had made up with the boys over dinner in the evening. Joe and Charlie had let Jack have some of their chips and they had agreed Jack could choose the first activity for the next day. Jack had chosen orienteering.

  Players were given a compass and a flimsy, clear plastic wallet containing a map and a clue sheet. The was marked with directions and symbols of things that players had to look out for, like tracks or hills. Players had to find their way through the woods between control points. Everyone got a slightly different route to follow, so that no one could just follow another group. Every control point had a special stamp to mark your sheet, to prove you had been there. Jack was enjoying himself. He getting into it too, though he couldn’t read a map for toffee. Charlie couldn’t see why you didn’t just use a map app instead of bothering with a compass and the clues.

  The boys had done three control points so far. At first, Charlie had claimed the compass, but after a couple of times when he’d forgotten that the needle pointed two ways, and sent them in exactly the wrong direction, Jack used the compass Chloe had given him.

  “Next control point should be dead ahead …” Jack said as he checked the compass.

  They came to a clearing in the trees, which had a ditch with a wooden plank across it. Across the clearing there was a small cliff, and the dark opening of a cave. A girl called Fatima was hanging around outside it.

  “That must be it,” Jack said. He had to hold the map wallet in both hands, because it was so flimsy. He tried to hold the map and the compass together so he could check the direction, but something was wrong. The dial was just spinning round, and for a moment it looked like there were five directions on it.

  “Hey, Charlie – can you help check the di
rection?” Jack asked. “This thing’s bust.”

  Charlie checked the official compass.

  “Yup. We’re going the right way,” he reported. “This must be it.”

  Jack called over to Fatima. “Is this the control point?”

  “In the cave,” she called back.

  “Cool,” said Joe. “Let’s go.”

  He and Charlie ran across the plank. Jack started – and immediately stopped.

  The plank went over a stream. Jack’s feet skidded to a halt as if they had a mind of their own. They did not rest of him. He knew it was stupid. The stream wouldn’t even come up to his knees. But when Jack tried to take a step forward his legs were wobbling.

  “Oh, come on!” he muttered to himself. “I can do this!”

  Whenever he felt the fear start to grip him, Jack thought of his five-metre badge. That badge proved he could do it, even though it had been the scariest experience of his life. But he hadn’t been back in the water since, and his fear had got worse and worse every year.

  It was always the same. First his legs started wobbling. Then his stomach too. Then he started to feel short of breath.

  Charlie and Joe hadn’t noticed anything yet. But Jack knew that in a couple of seconds they would realise he wasn’t there. They would look round.

  If Jack didn’t want them to find out about his fear, that was how long he had to get across – a couple of seconds.

  Jack forced his foot forward again onto the plank. Then he moved his other foot past it.

  Now his stomach was wobbling.

  And so was the plank.

  And then so was Jack.

  “Aargh!”

  He flung his arms out on either side. In his panic, his sense of balance just left him.

  Jack waved his arms and wiggled his hips, trying to get his balance back. The clearing, the plank, the stream – they were all swimming around him.

  He made himself break into a run for the last bit.

  But somehow his foot missed the plank altogether and he plunged head first into the stream.

  The fall seemed to take forever. Jack could see the stream coming up to meet him. The water was clear and he could see the pebbles on the bottom. Jack yelled and flung his arms out to break his fall.

  But his hands didn’t hit the bottom. He just kept going. Splash! Jack felt the water close over him and he just kept going down, deeper and deeper.

  Finally, at last, he hit the bottom. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, and his lungs were bursting. He pushed with his feet and kicked as hard as he could upwards.

  3

  RIVER WILD

  Jack’s head broke the surface. Water streamed down his face and blinded him. He scrabbled to clear it, spluttering and heaving.

  “Over here,” a man’s voice called. Jack churned the water as he splashed blindly around. He had the horrible feeling that any moment now the water would swallow him altogether.

  At last he felt someone take a hand and pull him out of the water.

  Jack wiped the drops from his eyes.

  A tanned, dark-haired man smiled down at him.

  “You made quite a splash,” the man said, smiling.

  Now Jack was on dry land his heart began to slow down to its normal speed. He was so embarrassed. It was bad enough that Joe, Charlie and Fatima had seen him fall, but to be rescued by a leader was too much. He tried to laugh it off while he looked around for his friends.

  “I guess I did.”

  But his friends weren’t there.

  Nor was the clearing.

  Nor were the woods.

  Jack turned a slow circle to take in what he could see, with his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.

  Mighty walls of rock towered above him on either side. They had to be several hundred metres high. He was standing at the bottom of a deep gorge.

  A deep river gorge. A torrent of grey-brown water zipped past his astonished eyes. Its surface tossed and turned like a wild animal.

  The banks were lined with rocks. The man had pulled Jack out of a shallow pool where the water swirled like a lazy whirlpool.

  Beyond the rocks was a thin strip of forest. Jack could see trees and what looked like bamboo. He recognised it from his local garden centre, though these stalks were greener, more knobbly and way, way bigger. And beyond the forest were the cliffs.

  Without realising, he hugged himself and shivered. A cold wind was blowing down the gorge and it cut right through his wet clothes.

  “We can do introductions later,” the man said with a smile, “but the first thing is to change out of that wet gear. I’ve got just the thing.”

  The man rummaged through his rucksack and pulled out a sweatshirt, a dry pair of trousers, and a waterproof jacket, together with some woolly socks.

  Jack ducked behind a rock to get changed. He could worry about where he was later. Right now he was cold and wet, and he needed to fix that.

  He felt like a new boy in his dry clothes. The feeling started at his feet as he pulled on the warm, soft socks, and worked its way up.

  “Better?” the man asked with a laugh as Jack walked back around the rock. “You just can’t beat the feeling of putting cold, wet feet into something dry. You’d better put these on, too. Where we’re going the ground’s going to be uneven and slippery, so you’ll need more grip and support than trainers could give you.”

  He set a pair of lace-up boots on the rock, and held out his hand.

  “I’m Bear, and I’m going to help guide you out of here.”

  Jack shook his hand.

  “Thanks. I’m Jack.” He didn’t really know what else to say.

  Jack sat down so he could pull the boots on. And then a horrible thought struck him as he looked at the water. How exactly would they get out of here?

  “To get out … we’re not going on the river, are we …?” Jack asked.

  Bear shook his head with a smile.

  “Not while it’s in that mood. Take a look.”

  Jack looked. The surface of the river was churning. A submerged tree trunk broke through like a submarine coming up for air, and was swept away like it weighed nothing.

  “Now that could really upset your day if it hit your raft,” Bear said, as they watched the trunk disappear downstream. “There’ll be all kinds of hidden debris that could sink us or pin us down underwater if it hit. There’ll be currents and eddies that could trap us. No, for now, we’re on foot.”

  Suits me! Jack thought.

  Jack stood up and shifted his weight from foot to foot, testing the boots. His feet felt secure and steady.

  He took another look around. He still had no idea how he had got here, or how to get back to his friends at Camp. But he wouldn’t get anywhere by standing still and he could see there was only one way out of the gorge. And if they were sticking to dry land, he’d be fine.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready!”

  Bear grinned.

  “Let’s do this, then.”

  They started to walk together along the rocky shore. The smooth round rocks turned and twisted under Jack’s feet. The boots covered his ankles and supported his legs, and he was very grateful for their firm grip. Without that support, he would probably have twisted something.

  After a couple of minutes the shore turned into a jumble of huge rocks. Some were the size of cars, and others were the size of houses. Jack and Bear climbed easily up onto the first one, then Bear walked a few paces across its flat top to the far edge.

  “Bit of a gap here …” Bear remarked. Without a pause he stuck out one long leg and half jumped across the gap. “… but not that wide. I can give you a hand over.”

  Jack stopped. The rock stuck out into the river. The next rock was less than a metre away, but there was a torrent of water rushing between them.

  Bear turned to face Jack, with his hand held out.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Jack still stared down at the water below.

  No way was Jack
getting over that gap. No way!

  4

  ONE SMALL STEP

  “Jack?” Bear said again. Then he asked kindly, “Is it the height?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “The water?”

  Jack nodded miserably.

  Bear’s voice was encouraging. “Okay, let’s do this in stages.” He tapped his head. “Everything starts in the mind. You can’t do anything if you don’t believe you can, so that’s the first stage. Forget the water, just think of the distance. You can step that far, right?”

  “Yes,” Jack agreed reluctantly. He supposed it would be easier than walking across that plank at Camp.

  So Jack stuck out a foot, Bear grabbed his hand, and suddenly he’d got across.

  “Way to go!” Bear said. “Now, let’s plan ahead. We’re high up enough to take a look at where we are.”

  Jack could see the river snaking away into the distance. Bear pointed and sketched out in the air the route they were going to take.

  “You see where the river bends? If we follow the rocks there, we’ll just end up in the water. So we are going to head up onto that higher bit of bank to get around it. The secret is that you’re always looking ahead, always planning your next move. Then, when you get there, there’s nothing to worry about, because you’re already prepared for it in your head. “ He smiled at Jack. “We’ll do this together.”

  After that, it did get easier.

  They had to jump over water again at the edge of the next rock, but Jack saw it coming. Bear was right – in his mind he had already put himself over on the other side. By the time he got to the gap, Jack’s whole body felt committed to it.

  He was still pleased when the rocks got higher and further away from the water, though. The river was roughing up into metre-high waves, like it was threatening him for spoiling its fun. He was very happy to get into the trees between the bottom of the cliff and the river. The leaves rustled in the wind and muffled the sound of the water.