The boat lurched dangerously... I was frozen to my seat, certain we were going to capsize

Ireached adulthood without learning to swim. Not even to float. As a child, when we visited a lake or beach, all time in the water was spent with a death-grip on my swim ring, hunkering two feet from shore. As the youngest of six, nobody took much notice. There was little reason they should, given that the Irish beach was yet to be transformed into the surfing, bodyboarding, kayaking, wild-swimming playground it has since become. I don’t recall seeing a single wetsuit in those days, only a sea of bodies paler than white asparagus. While plenty could swim, it seemed that just as many could not. By mid-afternoon on any hot day, a patchwork of red was guaranteed to have blazed across every strand in Ireland, severe sunburn often leading to sunstroke. This is a picture that was to change within a generation. But when it did, would I have changed with it?

Venturing to the local swimming pool with a friend when I was about ten, the spirit was willing. I climbed down the ladder, sinking up to my shoulders, expecting a miraculous swim reflex to take over. Instead, I grew cold and wrinkled in the corner, surrounded by the exotica of the pool; the thick rubber hats, the floating pool ropes, the white verruca shoes.

This was a loud circus of life, complete with underwater handstands and cannonballs. I envied the ease and freedom of these swimmers, but did not know how to secure their liberty for myself.

It took several fruitless visits before I stopped trying, yielding to that defeatism which affects so many of us who do not learn to swim as small children. Cycling falls into this category, too. I remember the quietly stunned expression on a friend’s face at university when I told him I couldn’t swim. ‘It’s like telling me you don’t know how to breathe,’ he said. There was something vital wrong with me, I thought. My failure was not mechanical, but personal, and I couldn’t fix it any more than I could grow an extra eye.

But I didn’t stay away from water. In my mid-20s, I found myself bobbing about in a small boat in Thailand’s Ang Thong Marine Park, after touring one of the pristine islands in the archipelago. A group of us were being ferried back to our ship – without lifejackets. When we got there, several passengers stood up, all trying to disembark at once. The boat lurched dangerously, and even more people got to their feet, trying to escape. I was frozen to my seat, certain we were going to capsize. Water flowed in over the side, the lush green of the Gulf of

Thailand ready to swallow me down, until three women who, about to fall off the gunwale, were hauled up on to the ship. The boat righted itself, and I lived to – finally – take swimming lessons.

A beginners’ class is remarkable for the courage that people show. Many have a morbid fear of putting their face in water, and seeing others challenge and overcome this, with incredible perseverance, was quite moving. I learned to float, but not to stand up again without choking on water. By the time I could do a front crawl, holding my breath for the full width of the shallow end, I was evicted – too advanced for beginners and too inept for intermediate. Off I went to find another class, where I was dunked in the deepest water and made to flail after a stick that the instructor held just beyond my grasp.

It seemed that if I wanted the ability and confidence to survive in water, I was not going to find it at my local pools.

I made no further progress by myself. In one hotel, I caught myself glaring with bitter marvel at a women swimming with her head and shoulders out of the water, buoyant as a cranberry, moving with the barest flicker of limb. It seemed impossible that she and I were travelling the same medium.

I felt more frustration than enthusiasm when a trip to the beach was planned in fine weather, about ten years ago. The temperature had risen to 28C in Connemara, and it was one of those days when the Atlantic has the look of a tropical paradise. As we drove out the causeway to Mweenish island, the water was green and turquoise, and for once the promise of warmth was not an optical illusion. We arrived on to hot sand, the great sun-baked strand warming the incoming tide. I was able to walk far out from shore, the water no higher than my hip, until the whole world seemed blue, with no horizon between sea and sky.

Floating in this calm bay of saltwater was easy. And comfortable. Over a couple of hours, I got used the water holding me up, and learned to trust it. By the time I returned to the beach, I had managed a fraught but serviceable breaststroke.

It is a day that feels removed from any place and time. Everything about it was perfect. Hermit crabs were lining up to swap shells at the water’s edge. Little blennies, with their big charismatic eyes, were gazing out from the clear shallows.

I’ve been able to enjoy water ever since. When I’m in the sea, away from everything, it reminds me very much of writing; how this too can feel like switching into a different element, settling into new perspective. In Ireland, when I look back to shore, I see sun-screened families and surfers and gourmet food trucks and lifeguards patrolling a sea teeming with confident water-lovers. I could never have imagined this scene as a child. Here is maturing pride, in ourselves and our natural amenities. And I am very glad to be taking part.