Building Den’s with BattleBox and Bear Grylls Survival Academy

When I managed to invite myself to an event in London with less that 24 hours to go I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. What I did know was that it involved a sunny day, a gorgeous park, some fabulously friendly bloggers and a BattleBox.

Little did I know that the day would involve lots of beetles crawling all over me, some war like face paint and a meal worm, but more on that later.

The day started with some survival exercises, we had to act like Monkeys, Jaguars, Kittens and Snakes. This photo shows Alison being a kitten.

She really enjoyed taking part in the exercises and even though she was the youngest there you would never have known.

After the exercises we talked about other survival needs.

We needed clean water, somewhere safe to sleep and something to eat that is rich in protein.

Something like a meal worm. Each worm has as much protein in it as the same amount of steak.

It doesn’t taste like steak, in fact it doesn’t taste like anything and if it hadn’t wriggled in my mouth or squirted its bodily fluids as I bit it I wouldn’t have minded so much.

The reason I ate a meal worm that was wriggling and crawling all over my mouth was so that Alison would also do it and become the youngest person ever to eat a meal worm. She agreed, she watched me do it and then she point blank refused and to make matters worse Elizabeth burst into tears because Mummy ate a worm.

Each family were then given The Bear Grylls Dangerous Den Kit (Ultimate) and sent off into the wilderness (Kensington Gardens) to build a den.

The kit included

Tough Camouflage Tarpaulin
Holdfast Steel Pegs x10
Strong Para Cord
Sturdy Wooden Mallet
Wooden “Danger Mines” Sign
Union Jack Flag
Tough Camouflage Net
Hessian Sand Bags x6
Hefty Khaki Backpack
Help for Heroes Milk Chocolate Bar
Living Wild by Bear Grylls
Playing Cards – “War Planes”

We went off in search of the perfect place to build our den. Most of the families selected to set up between two trees but not us. Oh no Elizabeth had preselected this tree. She chose it as it is the perfect place for camouflage and she wasn’t wrong. She is actually stood under the tree branches in this photo, wearing bright pink but you wouldn’t have noticed unless I had told you to look. In fact when the professional photgrapher was going around taking photos of everyones dens he didnt even see ours and I had to point him in the right direction.

It was the perfect tree to use to build our den and the foliage gave an added sense of wilderness to our adventures and we didn’t even notice the park start to fill up with sunbathers and families out for a picnic. The beetles seemed to like jumping from the branches into my hair though and this was one bit that I didn’t enjoy and still makes me want to itch just thinking about it.

All in all we had a fantastic day and really enjoyed spending time as a family in the great outdoors. I now need to get myself a similar kits so Daddy can come next time.