Anyone have a swimming pool at home ? What was your local lido called ?

A butler?

Sadly not, had to let the poor fellow go. We only have a chef, cleaner and a Valet these days.

Teignmouth Lido. At the end of the sea front. Yes, 30m from the sea. You had to leave to use the wave machine 😉

Swimming pools – utter death traps you mean 😉

TheDTs

Henleaze Swimming Lake when I was a kid. You can’t even join the waiting list now.

Wistfully remembering that being the place where I first got those thoughts of girls being something other than annoying 😀

Had to spend rather too long in the water before the tent subsided 😉

As someone who was a keen swimmer until Covid hit, I’ve often thought it would be nice to have a pool. We know a couple of people who have them. Problem is, it would mean moving to somewhere that offered sufficient space (so, outside London, basically), and we don’t want to do that. Then, there’s the problem of having a pool that’s actually big enough for a proper swim, so at least 25m. Would obviously need to be a decent depth as well, so that’s a very large amount of earth that would need removing. Even once you’ve got past the cost of all that, there’s the cost and logistics of keeping it maintained; pool-owning people we know, say it’s a nightmare. And none of them have anything adequate; they’re just large baths to show off with. Utterly pointless really, unless you have youngsters who’d enjoy splashing about. Fortunately, the recent increased popularity of sports activities and fitness, means there are now lots more publically accessible pools that someone else has the cost and hassle of running. A lifetime of membership would still be a fraction of what a decent pool would cost.

Lidos are for Victorian perverts.

Pools? Lidos?

It was the river Itchen (which it did make you) in Southampton for me. Racing dead rats downstream and making patterns in the oily rainbows on the surface.

And learning to canoe off Western Shore. Well, dunno about canoe, it was more a case of going through the motions (boom! boom!)

We just had this…

Legend has it that it a mistake in construction meant that they forgot to take into account the thickness of the tanking and the tiles and the finished pool was 6 inches short of Olympic size which meant it was unable to be used for official competitions.

I spent about 40 % of my entire childhood in there.

Was anyone around to see the lido in Millhouses park in Sheffield? Apparently there was one around the area where the fish bypass is.

Yep, that was my local as a kid @PiknMix. Have great memories of it as a child. There was one in Rivelin which fell in to disrepair but got renovated a few years back though. Millhouses was always the one to go to though.

Then, there’s the problem of having a pool that’s actually big enough for a proper swim, so at least 25m

My friend has an endless pool in their garage for proper swim training. Think swimming treadmill. I think they can double up as a sex pool hot tub. She’s very pleased with it. Not cheap and I have long thought a useful option. Domestic pools are invariably too short for proper swimming.

I’ve looked into getting an endless pool, but you still need quite a bit of room.

Probably a bit of a waste in a 1930s terraced house too 🙂

@tuboflard thanks for sharing that, I’ve never actually seen it before. Looks amazing.

my sister inlaw swims at home in a small pool in the garden with a bungy chord tied to one end! seems to work.

We have an outdoor pool here in town, a really old one, 75yards long. It’s great in the summer, 22 lengths makes about a mile. It’s weird at first swimming 75yds without a break for turning but you soon get used to it. Lots of Tri athletes use it for training. It didn’t open last year though, not sure if it’ll open this year yet either.

When I lived in Japan I basically had my own private lido – one of the junior schools I worked at up the road had a 20m outdoor pool, and I could climb over the fence and use it on weekends 😎 .

I’ve also swum at the New Bath Hotel pool in Matlock Bath – lovely! – though I prefer the little indoor one they have in the old wine cellar with the vaulted roof.

We have an Intex pool in the garden. 5m by 3 and 1m40 deep.
I swim with bungee ropes and can manage an hour.
In the town we also have a 50m Olympic pool, with diving board etc…
And compared to the UK, the diving board is pretty much a free for all. No need to wait at the bottom.

We just had this…

Legend has it that it a mistake in construction meant that they forgot to take into account the thickness of the tanking and the tiles and the finished pool was 6 inches short of Olympic size which meant it was unable to be used for official competitions.

Where’s this @peachypanther ?

Thought it was Wigan, as that had the same rumour; that they’d forgotten to take the tiles into account and ended up and inch or two short.

When I will the Euromillions a swimming pool is high up on the list of things to have!

I love swimming but hate the lane-culture at leisure centres.

And a full size snooker table – I’d have one of those too! 🙂

My friend has an endless pool in their garage for proper swim training. Think swimming treadmill.

I put that straight into the same category of treadmills and static bikes. IE; the work of Satan. A quick Google suggests such an affront to all that is decent, would cost from about £16k, so not so bad if you really, really, really need a personal swimming pool. So a fraction of what a real pool would cost, yet still more than a lifetime’s pool membership for me, plus it’ll last what, a few years?

Hilsea Lido. Legendary. https://hilsea-lido.org.uk/nostalgia/ (The high diving board was before my time!)
I actually went there again when my kid was a toddler. I think it’s the place where his mum forgot to strap him into the buggy and he fell out, scraping his face on the concrete. I’ll find a photo!

Ah, such fond memories

Overshoot, how old are you? That could have been my sister!! Would have been mid 90’s when we were up there I guess.

I’m pretty sure the pool that @perchypanther is on about was the one in the centre of Leeds as sure I heard the same rumour when I was younger too.

@PiknMix, yep it was superb (through my hazy rose tinted glasses), where the fish steps are now were a set of connected long narrow paddling pools too but they were closed due to concerns about pollution from the river I think.

Pool on nearby military base that was always freezing. 80s.

I’m pretty sure the pool that @perchypanther is on about was the one in the centre of Leeds as sure I heard the same rumour when I was younger too

Wishaw Baths. Hundreds of miles from Leeds. I imagine it’s an apocryphal tale attached to municipal swimming pools all over the world

A quick Google suggests such an affront to all that is decent, would cost from about £16k, so not so bad if you really, really, really need a personal swimming pool.

Exactly. She’s in North Carolina. I was thinking of one for a nice small house in France. Cool, easy to maintain, cover and leave… Hmmm

Athens training pool…

learned to swim here; the pool at Kai Tak RAF base in the 70’s. I remember once that the RAF were supposed to have a “war” with the Gurkha army unit. They declared the Pool the last redoubt and all rushed back to ‘defend’ it. Funny how that involved mostly lounging around drinking beer and swimming with their kids, while the poor Gurkhas ran about the air base looking for ‘enemy’ to shoot or capture

I think I was in my 30’s the first time I heard someone talk about a lido… Rivers, sea and swimming pools were my childhood destinations for swimming.

Nothing that fancy up here if Fife…we just carve them out of the foreshore:

St. Monans

Pittenweem:

Just Googled the Leeds pool and it was in fact a myth that it was too short. Worse it was apparently too narrow!

Highbury fields was my closest, my school Highbury had its own pool too.

Since then i lived in crouch end where the park road lido backed onto our house. an absolute nightmare in the summer with loads of different people bunking in and going swimming and whooping in the night.
they installed security and one night i saw him in the pool ffs.

i sorted it.

@TheDTs
Full Member

Overshoot, how old are you? That could have been my sister!! Would have been mid 90’s when we were up there I guess.

Old I’m old would have been 1976-81, no doubt your sister is lovely though 😉

Langold Lake.

Where’s this @peachypanther ?

Thought it was Wigan, as that had the same rumour; that they’d forgotten to take the tiles into account and ended up and inch or two short.

I heard a similar rumour, Halifax west yorks? somewhere in west yorks anyway, they dug the hole the right size but failed to take into account that the brickwork and tiles would end up with a slightly smaller than olympic regualtion size pool. oopsie!

A classic case of measure twice, cut once 😀

We have two Lidos in Cambridge:

Jusus green 91.4m in length:

Sheep’s green learner pool

Only on a very hot summers day, which were few and far between!
North Baths

The Trinkie

Southport Lido on Merseyside. It was filled with seawater and always freezing but had a couple of big diving boards etc. Bloody ace place to go as a kid.

Long since demolished. Theres a Frankie and Benny’s there now 🙁

River Nene

We just had this…

Legend has it that it a mistake in construction meant that they forgot to take into account the thickness of the tanking and the tiles and the finished pool was 6 inches short of Olympic size which meant it was unable to be used for official competitions.

Leeds International (yeah right) pool. Built during Poulson’s pomp (younger as in under 55 readers can google). Version I heard was it was just two tile thicknesses too short. Used to go there for British Sub Aqua Club meetings and games of octopush, a very violent sport.

One of those concrete beams you can see in the pic actually fell in to the pool, or part of it did. So they closed some of the spectator seating.

Okay, Poulson, local authority corruption basically, contract stitch-ups. See first episodes of Our Friends in the North. One of my grandfathers was deputy borough architect for Warrington (in retrospect I’d place him somewhere on a spectrum, though back then we just thought he was very, very Lancastrian). He mentioned at a dinner wanting to have some work done to move where one of the doors was in his house. Few days later some builders turn up and just do the job. He realises months later he was never charged. Slightly different league I guess. My other grandfather was a hospital porter. No swimming pool round there.

Good to have this at the bottom of the road when the kids were kids, albeit other side of a river that’s good for swimming

There’s a great art deco style one in Peterborough, but I’ve never been as when it’s open the queues are monumental.

Growing up, the nearest thing called a Lido to me was probably Ruislip Lido but I think that’s actually a reservoir & not supposed to be swum in. There was a lido there until the 70s I think.
I used to do X-Country races there occasionally when I ran for Thames Valley Harriers.

I lived for 6 months in a little town in Bavaria that had a Naturfreibad. It was great – a short cycle from town, fling a few beers in your rucsack & chill out at the weekend. Loads of the towns in the local area had them & they were all free to get into.
A great place to live in general, to be honest.

https://goo.gl/maps/1yMmZ7DPaYn1wTDC7

(The water comes in one end from a natural spring at about 17.5C. Flows through and then out the other end, off down into the River Derwent. No chemicals. No heating. No impact on the environment.

You know that the majority of the heat that water collects is a result of the decay of Uranium to Radon? When they studied the water flow they found that it stays relatively shallowly in the rock so very little of the heat is traditional geothermal heating.

Just out of interest who runs the pool at the New Bath (I lost track the last time the hotel went bust).

For me it was Matlock Lido, although they had just put a plastic roof on. More recently it was Hathersage Pool (until I was told by a nice lady with a home counties accent that I wasn’t local enough for them to sell me a season ticket).

I lived in Keswick so the nearest Lido was Grange Over Sands which was great and may get a refurb if we are lucky. That was a rare treat however so swimming was mostly in Towns field, the lake, the board by the Borrowdale Hotel, Grange bridge, Black Moss Pot or Manesty which was always my favorite, bizarre that it was 1ft deep on one side and deep enough to jump off the bridge on the other

I can see this one from my house