To keep up to date on all things Hell and High water, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to our Blog, YouTube account and mailing list. You can also find out all about the challenge and see the latest news here.

If you’ve been inspired and want to take on your own experience of a lifetime, then check out our amazing and global range of treks, bike rides and mountain climbs here. You can even take part in our exclusive Zambezi challenge. Click here to receive details once the challenge is complete.

Dara O’Briain struggles to maintain an elegant bearing in the fierce waters of the Zambezi, on the first full day of his Comic Relief challenge.

Anyone glancing at a certain stretch of the mighty Zambezi river yesterday would have been confronted by quite a sight.

Despite the obvious lunacy of attempting to raft more than 60 miles, I had always consoled myself with the fact that at least it involved a lot of sitting down, something I consider myself more than proficient at.

Not a bit of it. The first day of this Comic Relief challenge saw our motley crew taking it in turns to stand at the front of traditional Zambian boats fashioned out of tree trunks called Makoros and paddle using an elongated oar.

Despite the discomfort of essentially balancing on a log for hours on end, I quickly grew fond of this warrior stance, maybe a distant echo of my proud O’Briain ancestors who, as you all know, single handedly drove the Vikings out of Ireland in 1014.

My elegant bearing as we cut through the waters drew many an admiring comment from my fellow rafters, although unsurprisingly Jack Dee wasn’t all that impressed. He said I looked like an Irish priest arriving on missionary work.

At one point we tried our hand at the steering duties performed at the rear of the boat by a local expert. A series of unplanned 360 turns and we were very quickly dispatched back to providing the brute force at the front. Despite the aches and the pains though it was, all in all, a great first day – the trouble is there’s four more of them still to come and today white water enters our world.

I’ll do well to look noble in that.

To keep up to date on all things Hell and High water, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to our Blog, YouTube account and mailing list. You can also find out all about the challenge and see the latest news here.

If you’ve been inspired and want to take on your own experience of a lifetime, then check out our amazing and global range of treks, bike rides and mountain climbs here. You can even take part in our exclusive Zambezi challenge. Click here to receive details once the challenge is complete.

Source – daily telegraph – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/activityandadventure/9834614/Dara-OBriains-Zambezi-diary-day-two.html

A tough day for the BT Red Nose Hell and High Water team, as they face tough white water rapids, capsizing and all the Zambezi can throw at them!

“In his first exclusive online diary for the Telegraph, Dara O’Briain faces the reality of an imminent hippo encounter as he heads down the Zambezi for Comic Relief.

So, this is it. No matter how much I use my favourite of all the coping strategies, flat denial, the noise I can hear outside my tent is the Zambezi river and I’m about to throw myself at its mercy by attempting to raft down it.

I’d love to be able to say that doing this ludicrous thing in an attempt to raise money for Comic Relief seemed like a good idea at the time, but it didn’t – and now I’m here I realise my initial instinct was right.

I attempted to strike a deal with my band of twitter followers last week whereby they donated a fiver and we never spoke of this foolhardy venture ever again, but they refused.

Who can blame them from a comedic standpoi nt though of course? Watching a man of my physical magnitude attempt to get in and stay in a hollowed out treetrunk of the type we will be using on Day one is worth much more than five pounds and I was a fool to think otherwise. Continue Reading…