I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
Surprisingly, many Irish don’t know how to swim, even though it’s an island.
Never been to Ireland so apologies if this is stupid and wrong and dumb - I was under the impression that a large amount of the seaside was mountainous / cliff faces? If someone learned to swim under those conditions I’d say they’d likely be adopted by Poseidon himself.
It’s fecking cold!
Can confirm. Went swimming in Ireland in the summer once, my friend who lived there gave me a wetsuit to wear. Some other locals wore them, others didnt.
So are Irish conditions different from conditions over the sea in Wales, or…?
I stayed dry and fully clothed while building a sandcastle and watched the locals go swimming in wetsuits. Can’t remember where, somewhere on the coast of Claire or Galway.
I was staying in Doolan, so it must have been Bishops quater beach. It was in 2004, so I could be wrong.
There are plenty of beaches and people often travel to thembfor the sake of enjoying the beach. The main issue is that for 11-12 months of the year, the water is fucking freezing. If people learn to swim, it’s often in heated swimming pools as kids.
I can relate to this.