I had a very stifled early childhood; I was restricted to the house and garden when I wasn't in school, up until we moved house when I was 8, though I got fed up with the arrangements and snuck away a few times before then. After we moved, I was in a village with easy access to the countryside a lot more freedom to explore my surroundings, and I spent a lot of time by myself running across fields, climbing steep hills, crossing rivers on fallen logs (and falling in once) and other things like that. I had a few folding pocket knives and usually carried one around with me, made crappy spears out of sticks and garden canes which my mum was concerned about when she found them, though I didn't understand what the problem was, got into trouble with a catapult, made a slingshot that I couldn't get to work very well, made a den in the garden from scraps from a nearby building site and generally had an interesting time.
When I was 12, we moved again to where we are now, which is a boring suburb, and I stopped doing all those things, though when I was 16, I started going off by myself on long-distance treks where I'd carry food and sleep rough. I also had a lot of experience through my childhood and beyond of digging holes, nailing bits of wood together, planting things, demolishing things, cutting things down, moving rocks about and general gardening and landscaping. I could have learned a lot more growing up if it hadn't been for my mother; she's pathologically risk-averse, to the point where she wouldn't even let me have a stall at a car boot sale in case I lost money at it. It didn't seem to occur to her that it could be a valuable learning experience that was worth risking £10 on.