My goal as Chief Scout is for every young person that wants to be involved in Scouting to be able to take part. But in order to make this happen we need even more adult volunteers to keep up with the demand. So my aim is to encourage even more adults to volunteer alongside me and join in that Scouting adventure.

Bear Grylls brought his seven-year-old son Jesse, who has joined the Scouts as a Beaver, to Northumberland yesterday. Bear Grylls joined the Scouts when he was eight.

Bear Grylls will participate in activities, including sailing, rock climbing, canoe polo, and a canal boat expedition along Salterhebble Basin, through the Salterhebble Locks– one of the shortest locks on UK inland waterway system.

Where Is Bear Grylls Right Now?

Follow Bear Grylls, and the weekend activites on Flickr and Twitter. For photos, visit Bear Grylls takes to the air to visit 10,000 Scouts. For news, check UKScouting or search for #bearinthenortheast on Twitter.

For more information on UK Scouts visit: www.scouts.org.uk

Help For Heroes

Help for Heroes was started in 2007, to raise money for the construction of a swimming pool, at Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre Headley Court for injured members of the British Armed Forces.

This 85 acre facility was purchased after World War II using donations collected by Royal Air Force Pilots and Crews Fund. It was the Headquarters for Canadian Forces during World War II.

Help for Heroes raised £8 million for the swimming pool at Headley Court, and will open The Help for Heroes Rehabilitation Complex this year. (2010)

Please donate to Help for Heroes, which is not connected to any political organization.

Headway

Headway, “the charity that works to improve life after brain injury,” wants:

To promote understanding of all aspects of brain injury and to provide information, support and services to people with a brain injury, their families and carers.

Since traumatic brain injuries are the signature injuries of current wars, both charities support the same people.

Please donate to Headway. It uses contributions to provide vital services to brain injury survivors and their families.

Where Was Bear Grylls?

Bear Grylls, as I previously noted, has been filming the fifth season of Man vs. Wild, in Russia, Australia, and an unnamed desert island.

Bear Grylls is amazing because he participated in this event, with his wife, Shara, and oldest sons, Jesse, 8, and Marmaduke, 7, on his “day off“ between Russia and Australia.

Bear Grylls had a personal reason for appearing at this event:

When I had an injury when I was in the army I ended up in Headley Court which is the military rehabilitation place. Now they are seeing 100 soldiers a month passing through there who have lost limbs or arms. They do extraordinary work and I try to do as much as I can for them through various expeditions and supporting local events.

That’s why Bear Grylls is amazing!

Bear Grylls will lead a team on a two week trip, through the Northwest Passage in August 2010.

The Northwest Passage is a sea route that connects the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean through the Canadian Arctic. The team includes Dave Pearce, the medical officer, who helped discover Peak Levy in 2009, after Bear Grylls was injured, and unable to complete that expedition. Let’s hope there are no injuries on this expedition!

The expedition will also raise money for Global Angels, an innovative charity for children, which was created by Molly Bedingfield, mother of singer Natasha Bedingfield, in 2004.

How Will Bear Grylls Cross The Northwest Passage?

Bear Grylls will be traveling on the Arctic Wolf, a 37 foot (11.2 meters) long, “rigid inflatable boat” (see photo). The boat is a Zodiac Mach II – Military Air Channeled Hull manufactured by Zodiac Military and Professional Boats. Their description:

Considered the finest craft of their type in the world, the Zodiac Hurricane range of RIBs are used by the most knowledgeable and discriminating operators who demand the utmost in ruggedness and reliability. RIBs combine the security, stability, light weight and ease of use of traditional inflatables with the speed and comfort of a rigid boat. True “go anywhere” boats, they provide exceptional marine qualities combining a low centre of gravity to a deep V hull and a stabilizing buoyancy tube.

A “stock version” is fitted with three 300 horsepower engines, two fuel tanks which hold 1000 liters, and can travel over 55 knots, or nautical miles per hour. One knot is 1.15 MPH, or 1.85 km/h.

Bear Grylls and his team will have a customized version that includes:

• larger fuel tanks
• a canvas covering
• heaters
• additional storage

Arctic Wolf will also have a shock absorbing console built by Shock Mitigation which manufactures products “to make a violent collision or impact less intense.” Watch the Shock Mitigation Extreme RIB Video, to see a smaller RIB, operating in rip tide conditions.

Future Fuels Team : Northwest Passage Expedition

Bear Grylls and his team, expect to travel 5700 miles, at speeds of 18-38 knots, in two weeks. You can see an aerial view of their route.

Good Luck to Bear Grylls and his team!

Where Is Bear Grylls Now?

Bear Grylls finished filming Worst Case Scenario last week, and is working on Man vs. Wild : Season 5 in Russia, Australia, and an unnamed desert island.

I think he should visit Fiordland National Park, the largest national park in New Zealand, and home to some of the world’s largest waterfalls. I would like to visit Doubtful Sound, which contains two separate layers of water: several feet of fresh water above saltwater.

Fiordland is also the home of the kiwi bird. The Kiwi is the national symbol of New Zealand, and its currency is sometimes called a “kiwi dollar.”

10,000 People for Man vs. Wild Fiordland 2010

The only group I ever joined on Facebook is 10,000 People for Man vs. Wild Fiordland 2010. They reached their goal of 10,000 members, trying to convince Bear Grylls to film an episode of Man vs. Wild in Fiordland.

Unfortunately, Bear Grylls will not film Man vs. Wild in New Zealand in 2010. Liz Healy, Director of Global Communications for Discovery Channel said:

We are considering your part of the world for upcoming seasons

Bear Grylls is currently filming Worst Case Scenario in Los Angeles.

Bear Grylls will be placed in life-threatening situations, including a high-rise apartment fire, and a sinking car, to show viewers how to escape. Grylls will also fend off a shark attack — less likely, but probably very exciting to watch!

History of Worst Case Scenario

This television series is based on The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht, published in 1999. Among other things, Piven and Borgenicht explain how to fight bears, alligators, and sharks. The original book evolved into a series of 30 books, on subjects which include, Life, Dating and Sex and Work. The Worst-Case Secenario books have sold over ten million copies.

Mike Rowe, who hosts Dirtiest Jobs, and narrates American Chopper, American Hot Rod, Deadliest Catch, Ghost Lab and Wild Pacific for Discovery Channel, hosted a similar show on TBS in 2002.

However, on earlier series, stunt men performed the escapes, not the host. Rowe explained in a CNN interview:

“we hire the best stunt people in the world to show you out to get out of quicksand, how to jump off of a building and live, how to get out from a car that is sinking in a lake, how to deliver a baby in a taxicab, how to fend off a shark.”

Bear Grylls replaced Mike Rowe, as well as the “stunt people” in 2010 version.

What Is Next for Bear Grylls?

Bear Grylls described this project in a 2008 interview, saying:

“We’re hoping to do an urban survival Man vs. Wild at the end of this year”

Done! Now we can wait for Man vs. Wild: The Movie. Bear Grylls said:

“I hope to do a film next year for Disney that’s gonna incorporate loads of different stuff. The idea is to kind of base it around Man vs. Wild, so we would be filming in a jungle and then everything starts going wrong. You see a plane crash, and there’s a family on-board, and then a whole cat-and-mouse game in the jungle and me getting the family out of there, and then it ends up in London with fight scenes off the rooftops. Again, it would be fun for me.”

How Do You Fight A Shark?

Watch Worst Case Scenario’s 10th Anniversary for answer. At 1:43 of this 3:44 video, coauthor David Borgenicht, asks this multiple choice question to people on street:

What would you do if a shark attacked you? Hold mouse over correct answer to find out now

1. punch in nose
2. repeated jabs in gills
3. punch in eyes
4. grab fin

Bear Grylls discussed his vacation in yesterday’s Daily Mail Online. Grylls said:

“As a family, we try to go abroad on holiday once a year. The other break we take is to our small Welsh island each summer. Friends joke that facilities on the island, which sits miles offshore, are a bit on the 15th Century side, with no mains electricity or running water. But I adore it. In return, though, I owe it to Shara to make sure we occasionally have a holiday to a place where everything works and she doesn’t have to flush the loo with rainwater.”

Grylls said they stayed in:

“an immaculate three-bedroom detached villa, sumptuously furnished and with its own veranda, garden and small pool. We tended to breakfast there as a family, then eat in one of the three restaurants, each of which had its own cuisine.”

This sounded like the hotel’s “Bed and Breakfast Plan,” so naturally I looked up the rates. I did not find anything that matched Bear Grylls’s description, but a “Presidential Two Bedroom Suite” costs €10,300 or about $7400 a night. Bear Grylls defended his extravagance, saying:

“I know that in these recessionary times we are somehow meant to feel guilty about any indulgences, but I don’t buy into that. I work super-hard in some true hell-holes for most of the year and I have no reservation about heading off with my family to get a little pampering for a few days. As we used to say in the military: work hard, play hard. It is a great ethic to live by and I do so unashamedly.”

However, this “article,” which praised the hotel, seemed more like an “infomercial,” so the hotel might have been free.

About Mauritius

Mauritius is an island off the south east coast of Africa, about 560 miles (900 km) from Madagascar. Mauritians speak English, have no Army, and live in a tropical climate. It was chosen as best governed nation in Africa, on the Ibrahim Index. E.g. it scored 80.71 on “Participation and Human Rights.” For comparison, Libya scored 20.36 in that category.

It sounds like paradise.

Historically, Mauritius is best known as the home of the Dodo bird which became extinct about 1700. Dodo birds, were basically 50 pound pigeons; too heavy to fly. They had no natural predators until humans arrived on the island. Although the dodo was not hunted, because it supposedly tasted bad — humans also brought dogs, cats, pigs, monkeys, and rats, which plundered their nests, while humans destroyed the forests where they lived.

Dodo birds are often used as an example by environmentalists, to remind us to treat animals better. The image above was taken from Extinct Birds published by Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild in 1907.