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For former SAS trooper Bear Grylls, there’s more to the outdoor life than just a bit of fresh air. Connecting with nature is essential to his mental well-being, he says, and activities such as wild swimming – or even just lying in some grass – are the perfect antidote to stress.

Bear adds that his strong religious faith has also helped him through some tough times, such as the heartbreaking period when his father, Sir Michael Grylls, died of a heart attack at the comparatively young age of 66.

It was, Bear says, the greatest grief he had ever experienced: “I felt horrifically ill-prepared and I really struggled,” he told the i Paper. “Shara [Bear's wife] and I had just married and she also lost her father 10 weeks earlier. It was a crazy time and I felt pretty out of control and uncertain about life and my future. It took me to my knees, to be honest.”

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He adds, though, that in his view it’s only through adversity that we grow: “All the good things in life are on the other side of fear, failures, doubt and pain.”

Even his entry to the SAS came after a tough defeat. “I failed SAS Selection the first time,” he admits. “People don't know that. They just see the headline.”

“120 of us lined up on day one,” Bear recalled. “They told us 'there'll be four of you at the end of this’. I got about halfway through. I wasn't fit enough. Strong enough. Smart enough. Good enough.”

But the 51-year-old adventurer – born Edward Michael Grylls – tried again, serving in the Territorial Army with 21 SAS as a trooper from 1994 to 1997. His time in the SAS ended after a horrific free-fall parachuting accident.

During a skydive over Zambia, his parachute failed to deploy properly. “I should have cut the main parachute and gone to the reserve but thought there was time to resolve the problem,” he later told the Daily Mail.

The result was a fall of 16,000 feet, one of the highest that anyone has ever survived without a functional parachute. While he was badly injured, fracturing three vertebrae, by some miracle his spinal cord was intact.

“The doctor said I was a miracle man,” Bear said. “I had come so close to severing my spinal cord. Because of my age and my fitness, they decided I could avoid surgery.”

Nevertheless, there was a hard road ahead of him. He spent the next year undergoing 10 hours a day of rehabilitation, including physiotherapy, swimming and ultrasound treatment.

Although Bear still suffers “twinges and pains” in his back to this day, he was determined to regain his active lifestyle. Some 18 months after the accident, he would reach the summit of Mount Everest, making him the youngest British citizen to reach the summit.

Bear published a book about his achievement in 2000, which led to a television career, including hit shows such as Man vs Wild and Running Wild with Bear Grylls.