SWIMMING - DROP IN NUMBERS

[Bitterlemon12]

Has anyone seen the news today saying there is a huge drop in the numbers of people going swimming every week. Just want to rant on this! Hardly surprising and not news! The swimming pools in Swindon where I live are expensive, around £5 upwards per swim, per person, and totally run down and freezing cold with repulsive, smelly, disgusting changing rooms. My 2 year old goes purple with the cold and I find it unbearable at times.

If it was free, or say £1 per time I would love to go on a regular basis maybe twice a week but no wonder no one wants to go at the moment!

Our local pool is not very nice staff are mixed some okay most unhelpful. Pool always too full to swim because it has the commited or it has school groups or too many kids pkaying so again no room to just try and swim eg put into practice the strokes you have learned.

Wow Clary that would be at least 16quid here. I'd love to swim more.

Dd has a weekly lesson, around £6 and I swim once a week with her and one evening a week. I bought the pool unlimited swim for £23 a month which isn't bad for 8 trips.

The pool is a bit chilly but now she is 4 and swimming underwater, keeping active rather than just bobbing about, it's not so bad, and the changing rooms are really nice and warm even if the pool is icy!

It is expensive but I only have dd and this is our main fun trip out every week

The pools in Bristol are lovely and clean but very expensive. The only time I could afford to go regularly was when I was pregnant (free swims for pregnant women).

When I was living back home in Wales though, I tried a few local pools and was shocked. One was so filthy and gross that I paid, got in the pool, looked around and got straight back out. I am in no way germaphobic. Quite the opposite in fact. The other pool that I visited kept the fire door open all year around and was absolutely freezing.

One thing that really annoys me, no matter where I go swimming, is the music! Why do they insist on playing tinny, fuzzy music all the time. I just want a nice, relaxing, swim in peace!

We have two very new 25m swimming pools with 4 miles of each other (with spa facilities) built by the local authority on the Public Private Initiative) (basically the LA borrows money from the private sector to get them to build something then pays it back over years at a highish rate of of interest). With both you have a pretty good chance of getting the entire, large, empty, beautiful pool to yourself. Its like having your own private swimming pool. There are no local swimming clubs to use them - they just don't exist.

Adult diabetes, heart disease, etc are however rife in this area.

I'm sick of it all.

Both DH and I would like to swim but there's only about two public sessions at times we could actually attend (rather than 6am/5.30pm etc). Even those are at 10pm. Most of the evenings and weekends are taken up by school swim clubs.

Our local pool has very few times now when you can just go for a swim. In term-time the schools have it in the morning (and in the holidays there are fun sessions). There's then a bit of a window for swimming until the kids' lessons start after school. But if you work, you can't go between 12 and 3.30 very easily, unless you've got time to go in a lunchbreak. And the swimming clubs have their times as well. The pools are told they can make a lot more money out of lessons than casual swimming.

The pool is only 25m and 6 lanes, so gets very busy. The changing rooms can get quite manky. And the silly ratios for adults to younger children don't help either.

If the pool is too warm it's like swimming through treacle, but I would have thought it wouldn't be too hard to find a happy medium.

We're quite lucky in that we've got three 50m pools within a 30 minute drive. But one belongs to the army, so again times for the public are very restricted.

Oh and having read up-thread a bit, it's about time tax-funded (and indeed private) schools shared their facilities a bit more. What's the point of a school swimming pool being closed at the weekends? I know some do - one of our local schools has a swimming pool and the local lifesaving club uses it one night a week for example. But they all should. Same goes for school libraries actually. If the facilities are there, for goodness sake lets have access to them! The public get to use them and the school make money out of it,

Oh yeah - changing room that smell like fanny - what IS that all about? Do vagina's react badly to chlorine or something?

Our local pool is council run and pretty okay physically, recent refurb of the separate changing rooms to a unisex changing village open to the poolside with many many more cubicles available has improved turnaround remarkably, and the showers are numerous and very hot. The facility also has an outdoor lido open for five months a year which is incredibly popular and people come from miles and miles around to use it in the summer holidays. Indoor pool temps are usually okay but big pool is occasionally on the chilly side.

The problem is that it is very expensive despite being meant to serve the local community. It's £4.60 for an adult off peak swim (9-5, Mon-Fri, term time only) and £5.20 all other times, and £2.30 and £2.60 for children aged 4-16, under fours are free. Swimming lessons are just over £7 a time for 30 mins in groups of up to 10, however children enrolled in the swim courses swim free at all other times, a not inconsiderable saving if you go regularly on top of lessons. But waiting lists for lessons are currently over 12 months long!

It also has extremely limited full availability. In half its space the large pool hosts school swimming lessons every week day from 10 till 3 and then private group lessons from 3.30 to 8, and has one wide lane roped for lap swimming at all times, leaving just one wide lane equivalent all day, five days a week for open public swimming. The little baby pool hosts lessons in half is space during the daytime and is completely closed for lessons from 3.30 - 6.30 every weekday. Both pools are additionally half closed for lessons on Saturday mornings.

In feedback surveys people consistently mention the price as being what prevents them from using it.

I think I've been spoilt by swimming in Denmark and Iceland, where the facilities tend to be thoughtfully laid out, so you remove shoes and socks, then undress, then shower, then get in the pool. Strict sex-segregation, and attendants make sure you put shoes in the lockers/shower properly before getting in the pool.
Result: lovely clean pools, with little chlorine smell (which is, I believe, created when the chlorine reacts to germs/dirt).

Local pool, refurbished at great expense to Lewisham council, has no one ensuring people adhere to the remove shoes/wear overshoes/leave buggies outside the pool area rule, crap dribbly showers, and no attendant in the changing room.
Result: Eye-stingingly chlorined-up pool, sopping wet floor with pools of muddy water, plasters lying around, maybe a nappy/sanitary towel, chunks of hair, and a horrible foot disease I'm having real difficulty shifting. Oh, and a verruca for dd.

Thanks, Forest Hill. I stick to swimming in the sea and lakes and abroad, now.

Our local authority used to do family swim sessions, where the whole family went free with a child aged 5-17 that lived in the authority area. But they had to stop that and then shut down the pools (they managed to get a charity to take them over in the end, but no more free swimming). It costs quite a lot to take a family swimming now, so the pools are much quieter.

It's also very, very difficult to find a time that the pool isn't being used for swimming lessons or some other specialist thing. It costs too much to go when the baby pool and 1/4 of the main pool are taken up with lessons.

And, yes, the pool is absolutely freezing, which is no fun at all when you are mostly standing making sure your child doesn't drown rather than swimming vigorously.

To be fair my £3 for us to swim is slightly specious as I have already paid £20pm for my card - but I pay it anyway IYSWIM so I don't count it again! But even if you include the price of my pass, given that I swim 3-4 times a week, it's costing me less than £2 a swim.

Our pools aren't cold at all btw. Of course I no longer have to stand guard on the DC, but even when I did I don't recall a problem.

Hi yes I like the Oasis but agree with you on it. Cost me about £16 for three of us last summer for one hour so it's a treat.

I would love to go sea swimming but there are always jellyfish on our local beaches here in the northwest - too scary!

The pool nearest to us is lovely but so crowded that people are always smacking into each other as they swim. It's like a soup of people and it really puts me off. I love swimming but I only tend to do it when abroad now. Such a shame.

I'd like to go more but the public pool availablity in the evening and weekends is very limited. It looks from the timetable like there are lots of chance but when you get there the pool is sectioned off and most of it given over to clubs so it's really crowded for the rest of us.

Our local pool is miles away, and so expensive

If there was a closer, cheaper one, I'd be in it constantly

I'm really not surprised - wonder if they actually listen to the public and what they want form a pool?
We used to go as a family (2 adults, 2children) once the youngest was over 5 we had to pay for her it cost us £17+. At the weekends/after school it was limited to 1 hr sessions. That, I think, is quite steep....and is it really worth the hassle of getting there, parking, wet clothes etc for a max of 1hr. Cost and the 1 hr limit put me off....now apparently they have a £15 family ticket ...but that is still quite a lot if you wanted to go once a week.
They knocked the old pool down and built a new one -which apparently is smaller than the old one (DP & DCs have been, I haven't) . They were both 'leisure' pools -so not particularly suited to swimming - both had water slides and a wave machine (personally I hate the wave machine...)
At the old one there was also a square children's pool -with a sloped bottom so went to about a 0.8m deep and it tended to be warmer. You could take the children for a splash in the leisure pool and then to the children's pool to practice 'proper' swimming. There were toys etc in there but people were more likely to get out of the way of a child trying to swim than the teenagers throwing beach balls and mucking about in the leisure pools. The lessons were held there but only took up a lane or two at the deep end. There was also a training pool for serious swimming. As I understand it as well as the leisure pool there is a shallow paddling pool (for toddlers), a 25 m pool with a moveable floor that is used for diving, children's swimming lessons etc etc and a 50 m pool. I am out of practice - I wouldn't fancy trying to get in and swim a 50m length...I might not make it. But then the 25 m pool could be being used for lessons, diving, fitness classes etc etc. I wouldn't go on my own...stuck in the leisure pool or floundering in the 50m pool
Even with the DCs - wouldn't be keen if you were stuck in the leisure pool for the whole time...(DD2 didn't like the wave machine so we used to escape to the children's pool)
I can't get swimming lessons for DD2 (7) anywhere at the moment anyway - the leisure pool (6 miles away) and the other nearest pools (11 miles away) are all fully booked. And they all have a system were you turn up early (8am) on a Saturday or Sunday morning to try and get a space on the next suitable block -and you don't know how many spaces there are ...I know someone who queued up for 45 mins to find out there wasn't a space for their DC - there had only been 2 free spaces anyway...gone in the first 15 mins...

I think its a real shame that it is hard to find decent, warm, clean and affordable pools.
My DSs swim at school but only for one term a year so DS2 aged 7 isn't great.
I do take them myself but it is eye wateringly expensive, £5 for them each, less for me as I pay a monthly fee.
The changing room facilities are poor and DS1 has to go alone to the mens which I am not keen on.
The floors are often manky as there is a no shoes rule, but people push muddy buggies through them!
I think pools should be better organised for family changing, kept warmer and prices reduced!

I would swim all the time of it was a little cheaper and I had someone free to look after my son more often! I'm pregnant now and my local authority offers free swimming to expectant mothers which is FANTASTIC! Can't wait to get my exemption card through the post and I'll take DS once a week then slip off on a weekend morning on my own whilst DP is home with DS
We are very lucky that there is a very clean and new swanky council rum leisure centre nearby though !

Our local pool is utterly grim, one of my children just refused to keep doing swimming lessons there and I know what she means- cold showers, tiles broken, generally ingrained dirt, no plugs for hairdryer (except one you can pay for that doesn't dry the hair!). The whole thing needs completely refurbishing.

The staff are lovely, but the upkeep of the pool is contracted out by the council to a private company who obviously don't give a shit.

My friend from Denmark couldn't believe it when she saw the state of the local pool- as someone else has said, over there they are meticulous about cleanliness and even have to shower with their swimming costumes off as they think it's dirty not to. She couldn't swim in the UK as it made her feel ill.

Our local pool is freezing and dirty.

It would cost well over £15 for us to go which is steep considering we'd get out the pool after 30mins so we didn't freeze to death.

our pool is fine - in fact it's sounding better by the minute reading people's responses. clean, plenty of lockers, adequate showers (only just adequate mind)

at the weekend there's lane swimming until 9am, and then again in the evening. there are swimming lessons in both pools, but they just section off part of the pool so you can still turn up and swim pretty much any time. a family swim is £8.50 - two adults, two DC. Both my DC also have lessons at £4.50 per lesson per week.

I assume the reason it's ok and cheap is because it's still directly managed by the council, rather than contracted out.

My local pool charges for children from 3 years old, around £4 for kids and & £6 for adults I think.

A few years ago they had a special non slip finish applied to the changing village floor. The problem was that the floor had not been cleaned before this was done and so now the dirt is preserved underneath the transparent non slip finish.

For the first few months there were notices blaming the company that did the floor and assuring customers that this would be resolved. Then overnight the notices came down but the dirt remained...looks like the external company took a different view.

Anyway the dirt sub layer helps to disguise the top layer of hair which seems to be present from an hour after opening time.