To be annoyed that my gym only has open mixed sex showers

I’m confused - are there not wet and dry changing rooms? Or are the wet changing rooms mixed sex only?

In our local leisure centres it’s single sex changing rooms and showers for swimming.

My local pool is the same. I just shower and wash my hair with my costume on.

Many pools don’t use chlorine these days. UV systems are quite common.

(I agree that I’d want to rinse off but my local pool is open showers and people rinse, wash hair and get in with their day)

It’s been a thing at my local council pools since at least the 1980s

Assuming you have the funds available to be that choosy, of course.

If your budget doesn’t stretch to a Ballantyne’s or Nuffield Health etc etc or if you’re on benefits (free or heavily subsidised access to council facilities) then you’re going to be stuck with whatever the council decides to provide.

Which, in my City, means communal showering and changing cubicles.

Somewhat ironically, they’ve obviously been forced to recognise the safety and modesty needs of women (whether due to religious needs, sexual trauma or just personal choice) and have recently started “women only” swimming sessions. Which is commendable - if the women in question’s schedules suits the council’s timings.

My local council gym is just like this - swimming changing and gym changing are both off the same hallway. You need a gym card to get into the gym changing too. So you'd have to walk wet and barefoot in your swimming costume to go and use the gym shower and you'd have to have the right card.

Men rummage around under their costumes to "shower". They also go into the women's changing village and shout at you if you tell them it's for women only "I'M HERE WITH MY DAUGHTER".

I’ve not been to the local pool for quite a long time, but it had a changing village with 3 sets of cubicles - male, female and mixed plus family/disabled rooms. That’s fine, caters appropriately for all needs for changing. But the showers were just a very small number of completely open overhead type, really only suitable for a quick rinse - some people did lather up and wash their hair which would result in others having to wait dripping for a rinse.

seems like they really didn’t want to provide facilities for proper washing. I suppose proper amounts of hot water for each user can get expensive, I think this is deliberate not an oversight.

It's why they have chlorine in the water. It's not dirty water at all. At my pool the only showers are open to everyone so both men and women dont take their costumes off as they would be flashing the kids.

Mixed sex changing villages suit many people.
Others prefer single sex
You just find somewhere that suits you.

(

Much easier and saves the faff about women’s, men’s, trans etc spaces. Ours is cubicle changing and mixed showers you can wash your hair and have a basic rinse then shower when you normally do.

Um. Swimming in a public pool full of chemicals, pee and plasters does not count as a wash for your parts

My swimming pool has open showers like this and I showered with my costume on. However the chlorine caused vulval irritation and was advised by GP to rinse area with water prior to going in the pool (obviously washing before pool anyway) and after. I ended up having to bring a water bottle to do this sitting on the loo. Mixed sex changing rooms are more problematic for women too.

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html

My local council leisure centre has this with no single sex options. It's pretty grim and means you can't really shower properly, as you say

I always do it, and deliberately so, in these set ups. Past reception in my wet swimming costume dripping water everywhere. If they don’t like it, then provide me a single sex shower near the pool.

I hope she kept it and handed it to the manager?

I'll explain again. There's a gym upstairs with separate sex changing rooms. The pool (downstairs, obviously) has the mixed sex changing village with communal open showers - so if the OP (or anyone) wanted to shower in a women-only changing room after her swim, she'd have to walk in her wet swimsuit through public areas to reach one.

Our local has 5 stalls and about 10 open showers.

You’d need to join a private , but more expensive gym if you want single sex and or private showers, Bannatynes, David Lloyds for example.
Most leisure centres I’ve been to have mixed showers, some are even poolside in full public view.

Why can’t you wash your pits? Does your swimming costume cover them? Your bits will be cleaner than ever after a swim surely. Take a wet wipe in the loo if you’ve got issues with chlorine, tho don’t flush it ofc.

Amused by someone suggesting it’s an option to keep your costume on in the mixed sex open showers and that ‘most people’ do that at hers. I should hope everyone does apart from the very young kids at a push.

Yawn. Really? There’s a tool you can use to pull up news reports and all the stats you could ever desire. I’m sure you don’t need my help to use it.

My leisure centre would be the same -changing village with cubicles and open mixed showers for all - for the pool.

There are men and women changing rooms for the gym (with showers) but that’s a separate part of the building so you’d have to walk quite far to get to them.

I’ve never seen an adult in a towel in the hallways and I’m there fairly frequently

In the city I live in, and the city I moved from, all council swimming pools were mixed sex with shared open showers, shared blocks of lockers with shared (in the sense anyone could go in) cubicles arranged in a block.

My current city has two council owned pools (although operated by a third party private company on their behalf) and both are set up the same way. One is a two year old facility and one is about 20-30 years old.

There is one wholly privately owned and operated pool and that has single sex open plan changing rooms. But it’s a very old building and would, thankfully, be expensive / impractical to change to a mixed environment. I’m pretty sure that if they knocked it down and rebuilt it, they’d design for mixed, because it has cost benefits for staffing and provision of fewer overall facilities.

The two council leisure centres round here never did, there was a communal shower outside the cubicles but they were contained within men’s and women’s changing rooms.

What gym?

so you change in to costume and then have to walk through the building to get to the pool? And then walk back through building sodden wet?