He first drew attention after embarking on a number of notable adventures, including several world records in hostile environments, and then became widely known for his television series Man vs. Wild β Grylls was born in Donaghadee , Northern Ireland , on 7 June He lived in Donaghadee until the age of four, when his family moved to Bembridge on the Isle of Wight.
As a teenager, he learned to skydive and earned a second dan black belt in Shotokan karate. He's all around us, if we're just still enough to listen. Grylls married Shara Cannings Knight in The child was unharmed, though the RNLI later criticised Grylls for the stunt, saying its crew "had not appreciated" that a child would be involved.
Grylls used to be a vegan but now consumes a diet predominant in animal-based foods as well as fruits and honey. Grylls was educated at Eaton House , Ludgrove School and Eton College , where he helped start its first mountaineering club. His time in the SAS ended as the result of a free fall parachuting accident in Kenya in ; [ 25 ] [ 26 ] his parachute failed to open, causing him to break three vertebrae.
At 16, feet, his fall is one of the highest ever to be survived without a functional parachute. In , Grylls was awarded the honorary rank of lieutenant commander in the Royal Naval Reserve. On 16 May , Grylls achieved his childhood dream of climbing to the summit of Mount Everest in Nepal, 18 months after breaking three vertebrae in a parachuting accident. There is some dispute over whether he was the youngest Briton to have done so, as he was preceded by James Allen, a climber holding dual Australian and British citizenship, who reached the summit in at age To prepare for climbing at such high altitudes in the Himalayas , in , Grylls became the youngest Briton to climb Ama Dablam , a peak once described by Sir Edmund Hillary as "unclimbable", although now the third most popular in the Himalayas for permitted expeditions.
He also rowed naked in a homemade bathtub along the Thames to raise funds for a friend who lost his legs in a climbing accident. In , he led a team of five, including his childhood friend, SAS colleague, and Mount Everest climbing partner Mick Crosthwaite, on an unassisted crossing of the north Atlantic Ocean, in an open rigid inflatable boat.
