Discovering our inner survivalist with the Bear Grylls gang in Shropshire

When we signed up for Bear Grylls' new 24-hour outdoor experience in the Shropshire hills, my 10-year-old was disappointed that his hero would not be teaching us; the adventurer was off filming in Africa, apparently.

Within minutes of meeting his replacement instructors, though, all thoughts of Bear had evaporated. We were swept away on a white-knuckle ride of activity, challenge and fascination.

The other three families were strictly lads and dads. As the single woman, I could show no weakness. I was out to prove to Oscar that his mum could trap, skin and gut along with the best of them.

Bear is a busy man these days and guests on his outward bound courses are not guaranteed to meet him, although he is very much there in spirit, in the black and orange BG branding on the super cool kit – including razor sharp knives, flint and steel fire-lighters and army rations.

His instructors are carefully vetted, to ensure they embrace the Bear ethos of self-reliance. The new Shropshire BG crew beat off competition from hundreds of survivalists.

With their already established bushcraft and wild running company Farafoot, high on the top of Clee Hill, Nick Davenport and Andrew Primrose were front runners for the task.

Nick trained in the Territorial Army and, like Bear, has a background in martial arts and is an expert in trapping and wild food. Andrew is an ultra-runner, forager and guru of orientation and celestial navigation.

They kept us on our toes from the moment we left base camp, the Boyne Arms in Burwarton, on a route march up the hill, foraging along the way.

Oscar and I had gobbled our survival rations (fruit and cereal bars) in the car-park, so food was an immediate priority. In a show of great bravado, I plucked a stinging nettle and squashed it in my mouth, hiding my stung fingers. "Mmm, delicious," I encouraged Oscar, who clearly thought his mum was demented. He preferred wood sorrel; tasting of apple core and found in thick, verdant carpets on the forest floor, it had us grazing like stubborn ponies at every opportunity.

All plants have a defence mechanism, we were told; if you can't see it (as in prickles and stings) then chances are it is a toxin. "I will poison you at some point," Andrew promised, and so he did, with young tender leaves of a fern, tasting of bitter almond. We had ingested cyanide; sufficient to deter insects and even cause blindness and cancer in small mammals.

Maggots were next on the menu, disgusting edibles being something of a BG trademark. As one of the other small children swallowed a wriggling mouthful I felt obliged, as representative of mums united, to show my daring.

"It's just like a wine gum," one of the dads coaxed. Well that rang true as a cracked bell, as I bit through the soft-bodied, legless larva with a distinct crunch. "Oh, they'll do that" Andrew laughed.

We didn't take the path up to the 546m heathland summit of Abdon Burf – instead, we zig-zagged through the woods, slip-sliding up vertical slopes, scrambling over stumps and fallen trees and watching out for the 'widow-makers'; the leaning, storm-damaged pines.

We learned about orientation using shadows and pacing, to determine distance; I discovered I had the same stride-length as a small child.

Oscar fell headlong into some nettles, pulled over by his heavy pack, but not a tear did he shed. We paused by a muddy pool for a demonstration on water-purification, hearing about horrible liver fluke flatworm parasites.

Then we collected tinder for fire-lighting and were set 10-minute challenges to get a blaze going and then dampen it down with moss, sending out smoke signals. I could light fires all day long; call it pyromania, or some instinctual impetus for survival; the impulse is strong. Oscar and I squabbled over who got to use the flint and steel. Forget mum and son bonding; we were playing the blame game: 'not like that mum, you're putting it out!'

Finally, we reached our campsite discovering only part-built stick shelters and facing a night of near sub-zero temperatures. We teamed up in groups of four to insulate our dens with pine branches and ferns. The other dad and I eyed one another suspiciously.

The kids would be our buffer. As it turned out, they were delightful bedfellows; he was sweet and gentle with his son, whilst I had a tendency to harangue poor Oscar, like a soccer dad, especially after a sleepless night.

They also snoozed all night, whilst we tossed and turned and whined and shivered. Our ingenious shelter design – ankle high with our heads at the lowest end – felt a bit like being buried alive, especially in the middle of the night as we lay there needing the loo.

Finding a spot under a creaking pine in the pitch black was terrifying – think Blair Witch crossed with Hunger Games – but the toilet tent was clearly out of bounds to any self-respecting survivalist.

Breakfast was army rations; a full English with unidentifiable lumps of fried bread and beans. We began day two with early morning PT in the eerie mist; something Bear insists upon, apparently.

They then had us crossing ravines on high ropes, abseiling down vertical slopes through the trees and swimming across a frozen lake, with a mile-plus run to the finish, to stave off hypothermia. As official photographer, I could not swim the lake but Oscar made it across, with superhuman effort.

By far the highlight of the trip, so far as my son was concerned, was the skinning and gutting of rabbits and hares. The boys dissected with gusto, brandishing their BG knives. This part of the course is not for the squeamish, but at least the children now know where meat comes from. Hare tasted a little too gamey for my liking – the white rabbit meat was more palatable.

I will forever remember the sight of my first born, toasting a hare's heart on a stick, as though it were a marshmallow, with the rest of the animal trussed up above him, like an inverted Jack Russell.

He had the time of his life. I put on a good show for the sisterhood and I am very glad I did it, but I will send dad along next time as I know how much he would enjoy it. And I'm considering going vegetarian.

* The Bear Grylls Family Survival Academy costs £429 per pair of one adult and one child. Visit www.beargryllssurvivalacademy.com