The Power of the Paddle

Book excerpt: The Sunday Times Bestseller 'His name was Ibrahim. He was about five years old and the thing he wanted most in the world was to go to school.' In a tiny country on the Horn of Africa, extreme adventurer, former soldier and star of Channel 4's Hunted Jordan Wylie made an extraordinary promise to a remarkable young boy. Ibrahim's home Djibouti is a refuge from neighbouring war zones, playing host to children excluded from the basic privileges we take for granted in the West. So, armed with skills learned from a lifetime of adventures, Wylie vowed to raise funds to build a new school for those children. And thus began a series of exceptional challenges, seeing Wylie row solo across the pirate-infested Bab el-Mandeb Strait in a world first and run extreme marathons in ice-cold climates. To cap it off, he embarked on a journey stand-up paddleboarding around mainland Great Britain, along the way facing military firing ranges, crazy teenagers on jet-skis, psychotic jellyfish and, finally, Covid-19. This is the inspirational true story of the lengths one man went to fulfil a young boy's dream – and of the good that can be achieved even in the hardest of times.