Can You Swim?

[Zardnaar]

Everyone here knows how to swim

You need to just in case the Persians invade.

 

[Berzerker]

Lol we would ride our bikes and go to bunkers on the hill overlooking the harbour.

There was also a small lighthouse, they've turned the area into a penguin colony.

were those WWII bunkers and gun emplacements?

I lived in SF a few years before I even knew about the fortifications, it was like discovering a lost world

 

[Kyriakos]

You need to just in case the Persians invade.

Come on
Trivia: The brother of the famous drama writer, Aeschylos, was one of the heroes of the battle of Marathon. When the persians started to flee and board their ships, he held the end of one boat to prevent a group escaping. Unfortunately his arms were hacked off and he died on the spot.
Aeschylos himself claimed that - regardless of his theatrical plays, including Prometheus Bound - fighting at Marathon was what he was most proud of having done.

 

[Zardnaar]

were those WWII bunkers and gun emplacements?

I lived in SF a few years before I even knew about the fortifications, it was like discovering a lost world

Not 100% sure I assumed so but some may have been WW1 and we have a retractable gun emplacement here from 1890's.

There was a concrete building maybe a barracks with iron doors, a concrete gun emplacement type one where a cannon was mounted (they found it in a foundry iirc).
The final one was a concrete trench leading into a like a machine gun or observation bunker.

There was also steel doors leading into cliffs etc we couldn't get into. There was caves, old bridge made out of hardwood and trails leading around the cape to a beach and trails all over the cape.

Where I live now.

https://www.google.com/search?q=tai...Bw&biw=360&bih=574&dpr=3#imgrc=jrgg_iziTXjO3M

Victorian coastal defence in case the Russians turn up .

 

[Berzerker]

wow, 1890... I forgot Britain would have been building defenses long before SF needed them

 

[Zardnaar]

wow, 1890... I forgot Britain would have been building defenses long before SF needed them

Rule Britannia back then people didn't really think if themselves as NZers but British.

Some local areas, where one of those big caves are is a great beach for swimming. It's about 30 mins from my house, same as the gun emplacement.

Local swimming beach

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I never learned to swim as a child (bathing suits were sinful), but I took lessons as an adult. I can swim fairly well. I don't swim in the ocean or anything where stuff can eat me, but I can get away with a nice bathing suit at the beach even at my age.

 

[AdamCrock]

I learned how to swim as a kid when I pretended to be a spider-man in the corner of a swimming pool I "jumped" further and further trying to achieve my goal of reaching the next "building" without touching the edge or the floor and finally it worked - lots of trial and error though :]

 

[Paul in Saudi]

I swim every morning.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I learn to swim before i could even walk (well, that is true for everyone someway)
Sea is fundamental in my life and go to swim several times a week, even in the worst of winter. I have some special swimming neoprenes and have participated in several open water long distance swimming events. I have become some kind of cetacean to the point that i find easier to swim several kilometers than to walk them.

While i am a borderline case, most people here can swim since we live live surrounded by beaches and bays. There are good olympic swimming pools too for those days when the sea is at not very good mood, which are not few.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Rule Britannia back then people didn't really think if themselves as NZers but British.

Some local areas, where one of those big caves are is a great beach for swimming. It's about 30 mins from my house, same as the gun emplacement.

Penguins!

 

[Berzerker]

NZ sure is a beautiful country, sheep, penguins and seals to boot

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Rule Britannia back then people didn't really think if themselves as NZers but British.

Some local areas, where one of those big caves are is a great beach for swimming. It's about 30 mins from my house, same as the gun emplacement.

Local swimming beach

You are a lucky guy. We have some nice coastline here too:

 

[Zardnaar]

You are a lucky guy. We have some nice coastline here too:

Nice Spain will likely win nice beaches competition lol.

Weather helps two, there's nice ones up north.

 

[Zardnaar]

Warmer beach plus collect your own food.

 

[Zardnaar]

Found my child hood beach. We used to do collect paua and kina here.

It's a Stony/Rocky beach with a lot of kelp. At low tide you can swim in the rock pools.

Penguins, seals,sea lions it was a few hundred metres down the road from my sister's old house. Hasn't changed much.

At around 1:58 drone footage zooms out to road and farmland and the town's on the other side of the hill.

You can also see the rocks just under the water, it's high tide.

 

[The_J]

My parents taught me, but also had classes in school.
Okay, my mom taught me, my dad can't swim. I don't know why.
But i've been only swimming twice in the last 15 years. I prefer other sports.

 

[tjs282]

Yes! Swimming has arguably determined the course of my life.

Spoiler Potted bio, commemorating All The Pools I Have Known :

At some point in the early 80s in the UK, there was a big drive to ensure that all primary-age (5-11) schoolkids learnt to swim, so most Brits my age will have learnt to at least doggy-paddle. My mum had already taught us the basics, but I still remember getting on the bus to go to the Central Pool. The apartment complex where my dad lived in California also had a small pool, so the year my sis and I were over there, we swam every day that dad got home from work early enough to let us in (kids weren't allowed to use the pool without an adult).

So when I started secondary school, though I hated football, I was already one of the better swimmers in my year-group. Never got into it competitively, though: I took up diving instead. Did that for about 5 years, first in Reading, then in Southampton (though the pool my club used, "Center 2000", is now long-since demolished; this one was built just north of that site), but quit once GCSEs/A-Levels got in the way (if I'm honest, I was also being increasingly outclassed in my age-group).

I'd started lifesaving-classes at the local leisure centre, and went all the way to the top (although the various RLSS-course syllabuses have apparently been subdivided since then). While I was at college, I worked as — and then got qualified — as a pool lifeguard, part-time during vacations then full-time for 18 months afterwards. Centre staff had free use of the facilities, so I was swimming 3-4 times a week to keep fit.

Earned my basic scuba-qualifications with these guys around that time as well, later on qualified and worked as a divemaster (in Dahab, Egypt). I earned my instructor-card in Perth, WA; then worked (very briefly!) in Cairns, followed by stints in Dahab (again), Larnaca, Punta Cana (where I met my wife-to-be), Makadi Bay, and Sharm el-Sheikh. I gave up instructing in late 2005, after I turned 30 and needed "a job which would keep me" (my mother's immortal words).

We started taking our own boys to our local pool from when they turned 3 months old; we went nearly every weekend until about 3 years back, when the fun-pool section was closed down for major refurbishments (assuming GoogleMaps is current, it looks like the near-total rebuild is now nearly finished). But the boys now go swimming with friends instead, and we hardly go at all.

Pretty much the only time I get in the water these days, though, is during our dive-holidays. I kind of miss swimming regularly, but not enough to make the effort to actually do it.

 

[Ferocitus]

All Aussies can swim. If you can't there's no chance of getting away from a 5m long shark.
I'm still amazed that so many English sailors of the >15th century couldn't swim. One reason (possibly false) I read was that it was better to drown than to starve or to be nibbled to death by ducks or something.

 

[Zardnaar]

All Aussies can swim. If you can't there's no chance of getting away from a 5m long shark.
I'm still amazed that so many English sailors of the >15th century couldn't swim. One reason (possibly false) I read was that it was better to drown than to starve or to be nibbled to death by ducks or something.

Who had swimming pools?

Pretty much every NZer can swim. Sure there's the odd one that can't but waters everywhere.

It's pushed in schools as well so maybe if you're parents don't teach you school well.

Every town seems to have a pool, school pool, or river nearby. I suppose very small towns might not along with some schools.

Old haunts down the coast. We used to cycle down the eroded road. Almost 10ks of coastline to swim at.

That grass bit in the thumb nail is the car park, the changing room is behind the car.

Foreshore, harbor we used to raft and jump in,cape I back ground with the bunkers, penguin colony below that although you can find the all up the coast.

Hometown is the urban areas.