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.
“Just throw the kid in” This works for just about everything, you’ll be surprised.
Dinner? Just gather the ingredients ( to be fair, they’re still kids ) and throw the kid in. They’ll be a master chef in no time, it’s natural.
But seriously, i also learned by instinct, but i remember lots of kids were cautious of and some were really afraid of water and needed a little teaching and patience. It was part of school here in Germany, no opt-out.