572
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by aard@kyu.de to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] PhiAU@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago
[-] Silentrizz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] PhiAU@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] BigNote@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

It's not that cold. It's the Gulf Stream, which flows south-north from a tropical origin so it's warmer than the water on the US west coast, for example, which flows north-south from the Bering Sea on the Alaska Current.

The Gulf Stream is also why northwestern Europe is as temperate as it is while being at the same latitudes as southeastern Alaska and northern British Columbia which have heavily glaciated coastlines.

If the Norwegian fjotds were in Alaska, for example, they would be the mouths of giant glaciers, but they aren't, again because of the warming influence of the Gulf Stream.

Not sure if that makes sense, but anyway.

[-] vashti@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

So are Irish conditions different from conditions over the sea in Wales, or...?

this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
572 points (98.3% liked)

Asklemmy

43905 readers
1780 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS