Shropshire Star

Bishop's Castle paraglider Mark flies in to help Bear Grylls

A paraglider from Shropshire is helping one of TV's best-known action men take to the skies.

Published
Mark Leavesley, left, and Bear Grylls

Mark Leavesley, who runs Leavesley Aviation paragliding school in Bishops Castle with wife Sian, is now working on a new TV show with Bear Grylls.

Grylls is putting together a new series of Running Wild, a show the presenter and survival expert has presented since 2014, where in each episode he brings a different celebrity along on his adventures with a small film crew.

Bear Grylls (left) with Mark Leavesley advising

Celebrities such as Channing Tatum, Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet and even former US president Barack Obama have appeared in previous series.

For the 2017 series Mark is now part of the team.

Sian said: "Mark is the flight safety officer for the TV series and his job is to keep Bear Grylls safe while he is doing any paragliding or paramotoring.

"We can't talk too much about what's happening on the episodes Mark has already done, but the new series of Running Wild with Bear Grylls will be on our screens on the Discovery UK channel later in the year," she said.

She said Mark's skills and knowledge are widely known in the paragliding world.

Bear Grylls (left) with Mark Leavesley advising

He was recently approached by NBC, an American broadcasting company, after being recommended by the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association to be involved with the show.

She said Mark has already been on two shoots with the programme production team which went very well and has been asked to carry on working with them for future episodes.

Mark added: "I'm super proud to be a part of this great team and project. People need to keep an eye open for Running Wild with Bear Grylls coming soon."

It is not the first time Mark has been involved in television work, having been tasked with crashing a glider into a lake for the Midlands-based BBC detective TV series Dalziel and Pascoe among other things.

Mark and Sian have run Leavesley Aviation since 1994 and the business has been based in Bishop’s Castle for the last 13 years.

He became a chief flying instructor for the Long Mynd Club with the experience and knowledge he has gained through 25 years of flying paragliders and in his early days, hang gliders.