Encouraged by professional advice that Swimming is good for your back, I took the plunge (excuse the pun) and checked out our local town swimming Pool.
Why? Because all the fancy pools require you to have an eyewatringly expensive gym membership for 12 months with a chance to cancel after 6… so basically you go twice and then pay 1/20 of your salary for half a year every month until you remember you need to cancel it
So back to the story – public pool. Now I have never actually been to a pool in the UK before, oddly enough, even though I have been here for years. So lets start at the beginning:
You normally follow the “to the pool” signs and it brings you to a junction with two different directions: Mens` dressing room and Womens` dressing room…Right?
But that would just bee too obvious, now wouldn`t it, so in Wales you get the option of “schools this way” and “public” this way.
I kid you not. You get the pleasure of hanging around shady old men whilst trying to disappear in one of the booths they kindly have provided for changing.
Carrying on…
If you have not caught pneumonia by the time you get to the pool in your swimsuit because the air is freezing cold, I congratulate you!
As I managed to go in a time when “young professionals” are usually not off work yet, I had the pleasure of sharing the pool with an excellent array of retired people (and kudos to them for keeping up the good work!).
Have you ever felt a lifeguard is just silently judging you as the only person in the pool with no proper swimming skills?
Yeah, neither have I…right…hehehe…now why would I say that.
Finally, after a nice long swim in lukewarm water, I made the best discovery – the jet jacuzzi.
If you happen to be lucky enough to occupy most of the jacuzzi on your own, this is probably the best budget alternative to a pricey massage…or so I found
Getting out was the toughest part…because the air was still freezing cold, but I seemed to be the only one minding that – the pensioners over here are truly hardcore
And that`s my experience of a UK public pool in a nutshell.
So are the pools usually as odd over here? What about where you live?
