Bear thrills
INSIDE a cage with acrylic bars, you can get close to fish without feeling like their dinner.
But it’s difficult to completely trust the blacktip reef sharks and rays that seem to relish brushing past menacingly.
It certainly got the adrenaline pumping while snorkelling among 800 tropical fish in the aquarium at The Bear Grylls Adventure.
The survival expert’s only activity centre is housed in a huge hangar near Birmingham’s NEC and the Resorts World leisure complex.
It’s also where you can try indoor skydiving and so, as I thrust out my arms and let my body fall forwards, the instructor’s last words spin around my head.
“You’re about to feel what it’s like to fly,” he had promised, with a grin.
Within a split-second, gushing air flung me up so powerfully that the instructor had to grab hold of me to stop me soaring off.
Yep, I was flying… but only by the seat of my pants, I’d say.
After a safety briefing and a lesson to learn the hand signals the instructor uses, my family and I had donned wind-proof jumpsuits and were guided into a vertical wind tunnel – a tube of fast-moving air designed to simulate what a skydiver feels when jumping out of a plane.
Thrill
My husband Tim and I had taken along Harvey, 18, Rosie, 13 and Freddie, 10.
Afterwards we all felt elated, dizzy, relieved, slightly in shock… and aching all over.
It really is a crazy sensation as the air whips underneath you. And despite having an instructor there to steady you, you’re more worried about being catapulted up and splattered on the ceiling than plunging to the floor.
The optional extra of a “high fly” – where you spiral to the top with an instructor – gives you an added thrill and cements IFLY as a fun and novel activity for all.
The thrilling escapades at The Bear
Grylls Adventure start from just £20pp when booked online at beargryllsadventure. com. To recover from all that excitement, we headed to the conveniently close Sky By The Water – the Genting Hotel’s rooftop restaurant with magnificent food and lakeside views.
My duo of Scottish beef in a barbeque jus was beautifully tender and packed with flavour, while show-stealing desserts – created by head pastry chef Darryl Collins, a finalist on 2018’s Bake Off: The Professionals – included passion fruit cheesecake with gingerbread crumb and salted caramel millionaire’s tart.
The kids’ menu also offered imaginative dishes such as roasted vegetable linguine and ice cream with Oreos. For more information, visit gentinghotel.co.uk.
Afterwards, the children let off some steam at the bright and modern Vortex Gaming. They were in their element playing on wallto-wall gaming machines from classic penny pushes to state-of-the-art VR pods. See vortexbirmingham.co.uk. To turn our visit into a fun short break, we spent a couple of nights at the Marriott’s Forest of Arden Hotel and Country Club, which sits in rolling West Midlands countryside and is handy for both Birmingham and Coventry.
The area has recently seen a surge in visitors, no doubt due to the popularity of TV’S Peaky Blinders, which is set in Birmingham.
Coventry is on the up too, and deserves more attention from visitors – something its new £25million leisure complex The Wave will help to achieve.
The huge indoor waterpark has six pulseracing rides, a lazy river and to top it all, the UK’S biggest wave pool. Sessions from £10.50 for adults and £9 for children.
There’s also a great gym, a 25m pool and the gorgeous Mana spa. I can particularly recommend the ultra-relaxing 30-minute deep tissue massage for £40. The complex also has a cafe serving healthy options such as homemade salads and jacket potatoes. See thewavecoventry.com.
After all that we drove to 500-acre Coombe Country Park for outdoor fun at Go Ape. The kids loved the Treetop Challenge – five courses of zany zip wires and high ropes including a Tarzan swing.
Treat
The experience starts from £28 when booked at goape.co.uk/coventry.
Meanwhile, for £14pp, Tim and I released our inner lumberjacks with some axe throwing, which was entertaining but much harder than it looks.
If you’re at the country park, you’d be mad to miss the famous afternoon tea at the grand Coombe Abbey Hotel. Harvey, Rosie and Freddie shared a