To wish you could still just turn up & swim

Agree, 50 minutes is not worth going for. By the time you’ve got the kids in it’s time to get out and they get annoyed and it’s really expensive now.

Oh, and also, lidos. There is literally no point going to a lido for 50 minutes. The point is to be able to hang out all day. Pre covid you got there early, or you waited for someone to come out. People took picnics. 50 minutes is the most depressing thing ever, especially as they haven't reduced the prices at most of them.

I hate it too. 50 minutes is a stupidly short session with kids. And I swim lanes as well and the timed sessions have the effect of bunching everyone up- so everyone gets in the pool at the same time, making the lanes much more congested. If you staggered times it would relieve the pressure as most people don't swim lanes for more than 45 minutes ish.

The other thing which I think has come in since covid is lifeguards making the DC do a swim test every single time. I get they don't just want to take parents' word for it but it involves loads of hanging about at the start of each session which are already short. They should be able to put it on the system somehow so when you check in they get a band or something.

I swim outdoors now in a reservoir
5ft ish deep across the whole way, huge, sand on the bottom and no drains/pipes/anything dangerous
No booking

You just turn up at ours. They have bands if it's busy. Just like when I was young.

It’s an absolute pain. You used to be able to swim any time. Now they constantly have lessons so you can only go and swim in the kids pool on Saturdays. Also you could go in the big or small pool as you liked - now you have to pick one pool and stay in it. And my local pool now has 45 minute sessions so it’s hardly worth going swimming! We spend more time travelling and changing than we spend in the water.

In the good old days we used to go swimming and stay in as long as we felt like it, at least an hour and a half. Who on earth bothers going swimming for 45 minutes?

Not sure where you are at but all the swimming around d here is turn up and swim during general swim times. No need to book. We're in County Durham

I tend to agree really. Obviously the ability to book is brilliant as it avoids wasted time/disappointment etc., BUT the inability to at least randomly turn up and take the risk is a massive loss. I do wish we could get a middle ground of a certain percentage of slots being compulsory to book and a certain percentage being held back only to be available for "walk ups". I fully understand why organisations do it, but I also think they could be risky losing business by people simply not bothering, especially for a few organisations who automatically close their online bookings on the day itself, giving the impression it's full, when they still have available spaces.

I've just been on a heritage railway. Pleased to see when I looked at their website a few days again that they no longer do the compulsory advance booking so we turned up on spec, bought tickets and had a good day on it. We holidayed in the same place last year and their website was all "advance bookings essential, no walks up tickets available", which put us off and we decided not to go on it then. But as it was local, we still went to the station as we had an hour or two to kill and thought it would be good for a photo, look at the gift shop and have a coffee and cake, and pretty annoyed to see the booking office open, people buying tickets and a half empty train at the platform! At least they saw sense and stopped that stupidity eventually and updated their website! Compulsory bookings and seating plans etc may have been essential during the lockdowns, but a lot of places seem to have kept the restrictions when there's simply no need.

This annoys me in every aspect of life. I use to drop into places that I now don't because I don't know if I'm going to be free. A group I used to go to stop taking Eventbrite bookings the night before, but with two children who have school issues I don't always know if I'm going to be free the next morning. I go swimming with my daughter every weekend, but they only have three one-hour slots a day and we sometimes miss the slots if something comes up. Really low capacity too. I wish we could go back to turning up to some things, where bookings get priority but if there's space we could just go in.

I hate having these one hour sessions. The pools used to just give you a coloured band and when it reached capacity they would call out the first colour. You used to be able to swim all day or even for two hours when it was busy. I have a disabled child and we found that by the time we've got ready to swim we've lost a large part of our swim time. And you can't always get there for a set time. We used to swim after school and do 15:30 until 17:00 but now we can't because there's only a 15:00 session or a 16:15 one.

Many places have just used booking systems used during Covid as an excuse to manage their workforce/ business costs better.
Many also just to increase shareholder profits, not about customer service at all !

For example our waste recycling centre requires online booking....Council owned site but outsourced....thus Contractor run.

Prior to Covid, you'd drop in anytime, never queueing, pull up, disgorge your recycling and waste into the relevant skips and pull off. Vehicle throughput was managed onsite, steady, busy, minimal delays.

Now have only online booking... the day you have a visit booked, it could be raining so you can't clear the garden as intended. Other people can't avail themselves of that prebooked visit and the throughput is less but the staff required are less.

Result = more dumping of stuff in lay-bys down our country lanes...
Awful to see but what can you do when the Council won't help people dispose of rubbish easily and responsibly.

With our time poor lives, when daily living becomes a problem and we're paying so much for it, the public become disheartened.

Not sure if that's worse than mine,
but two women do keep swimming but very very slowly and next to each other, chatting the whole time!

Round here the kids swims start at 12, I have early risers and it's annoying!

Maybe if the tories hadn’t stolen all the money there would be enough to do things like build adequate facilities like pools so that people could go and exercise and take their children whenever they wanted…

My local pool does this, it’s ok, I book the slow lane for 6am every weekday morning, what pisses me off is 4 women who turn up most days, swim 1 length then sit in the water in the shallow end and chat for the entire session, it means other swimmers can’t do a full length and have to turn round at 3/4 mark!

There are always lessons learned and changes implemented - we hope - when children or others drown in UK public swimming pools.

It's a lot safer to stream swimmers into ages and sizes and abilities and activities.

And what lifeguards, of what experience are watching out - in particular - for what dangers/ hazaards.

Elderly people swimming laps - Is a change in co-ordination a sign of a stroke?

Lots of small toddlers - Are their parents paying attention or gossiping? Are the toddlers coping well in water or want to run dangerously on slippery surfaces?

Because 25 UK people (mostly children) drown in pools on package holidays in mainland Europe every single year.

I agree it's all a bit restrictive now. Not just booking but pool use.

Back in the day you'd have three pools, one for general use, one for teaching, one warm shallow pool for small children and toddlers. You'd have space to swim.

Now it's one big pool, chopped into half. One half seems to be permanently for teaching, mainly groups of adults. The other half is split into narrow "lanes" of three different speeds, fast, medium.and slow. You have to book each one separately amd sometimes thete are no slow slots but 7 fast ones. Etc.

It just seems so unnecessarily bureaucratic and rules oriented. It's stressful before you've even put a toe in the water. Don't get me started on the awkward etiquette if those narrow lanes. 🙄

I think they give a time don't they - eg if you want the medium lane you have to be able to swim a length in x seconds.

But I agree if you are there, it's all relative and if you've got the stereotypical women of a certain age swimming breast-stroke in the slow lane, you might want to go to the middle lane even though you're not that fast yourself.

I don’t actually mind pre booking but I do begrudge paying £35 for not even an hours swim for a family of 4.
Pre Covid you could book or just turn up and sometimes you did get turned away. But you could stay as long as you liked. Now you’re chucked out after 45 minutes and it’s more expensive!

Ive got myself a gym membership and pay for the kids to go they are £8 each and we can stay all day if we want to

Our local one cannot be booked in person, it has to be online and using a card as they are cash free! Teenagers cannot just rock up and swim, older people Who can’t use tech are excluded and people who don’t have access to bank cards are excluded!

Public swimming should be inclusive to all!

@fieldsofbutterflies also many parents used to just dump and run when you were a child. So now there's parents too in the pool (better) so even more at capacity.

@fieldsofbutterflies because things have moved on since you were a child??
Areas have become more populated, more rules and security measures in place (the better). Not sure what decades ago have to do with today.

Yeah ours is the same. There’s just two days a week which has a 9-10am slot which works well, the only other times the learner pool is open (in term time) is 12-1:30 which is right over my DS’s (and probably the majority of toddlers) nap time.

I understand it’s not financially viable for them to have the learner pool open all the time due to lifeguards etc, but just unfortunately the timings don’t work out well on their regular session.

Me too. Even better when people have booked and don't turn up, more space the better. Hate turning up somewhere and it's heaving.

There are restrictions on the numbers of swimmers vs lifeguards. A lot of pools struggle to recruit/retain lifeguards now.

Yes that's right, the pool where I regularly swim has a limit of 19 swimmers per lifeguard. So unless there is a second lifeguard available, the number of swimmers is limited to 19.

However that has nothing to do with pre-booking - my pool doesn't require you to book. If you arrive and there are 19 swimmers in, they will ask you to wait until someone gets out. (I've never had to wait, but I think it gets busier later in the day.)