Posts Tagged ‘swimming pool’

I’ve been training at Kirkstall leisure centure for a few months. However, since January it’s been rammed. 9-10 people per lane, which is just too many to get a proper workout.

So, I decided to give The Edge at Leeds University a go. I’ve only been twice but so far it has been a success. Here’s why.

It’s open all of the time

Kirkstall has specific sessions. For example, I used to go to the 12:00 to 13:30 session. Most of the time the pool is closed, or something else is happening, so you can’t go. You have to wait for the specific sessions.

At The Edge, the pool is open almost all of the time. There are a few sessions such as water polo or canoeing where they close the whole pool. However, for most events, they just close a few lanes and keep the rest of the pool open.

You can swim for ages

At the end of a session at Kirkstall, you get kicked out. At The Edge, you can swim until you get bored.

It’s bigger

They have eight lanes. They’re half the width of Kirstall’s three, but it feels a much better way to do it as it reduces the number of people per lane. They have multiple slow lanes, for example. And a double lane at the end if you would prefer that.

It’s deeper

Kirkstall goes from 0.8 metres to 1.6 metres. 80cm of water is not enough for an adult. It’s a family place so I understand why they do it. But I can stand up, on flat feet, at any point in the pool.

The Edges goes from 1.2 metres to 2.0 metres. Their floor can go up and down so sometimes they bring it to 0.9 metres in the shallow end. But even then the whole thing is deeper, and that is only if you go to the morning sessions. The rest of the time it is much better.

It’s cheaper

Off-peak, The Edge costs £4.50. That’s the price the public play, let alone if you’re a member of the university. At Kirkstall it is £4.90. There is no off-peak price because nobody in Kirstall has a job.

They have hair dryers

They might be rubbish, but The Edge does have hair dryers that do work eventually.

The lockers are bigger

They have these big square lockers that are much wider than most places. This makes it much easier to squeeze your bag into.

Fresh from our trip to Kirkstall leisure centre, we decided to hit Fearnville this week.

It is also operated by Leeds City Council and as such as much the same facilities and pricing. It’s £4.90 for an adult and under 5s go free. There is a 25-metre pool at the same depth of 0.8 metres to 1.6 metres, making it almost deep enough for an adult in the deep end.

Their children’s pool was open and it was nice and warm. Venla enjoyed having a good splash.

The changing room setup is a little different. They split into men and women but then merge back together for family changing: with big cubicles, changing tables and lockers. This worked really well because we could double-team Venla.

The showers were back in the separate gender changing areas and there was still no plug socket for my hair dryer. The lockers required £1 and the keys were less fancy: it was literally a rubber band with a key attached to it.

As part of working out what gym we wanted to join, myself and Elina headed down to the Crowne Plaza Hotel to check out their Spirit Health Club.

It was pretty disappointing. The cool was 15m in length, which is shorter than The Marriot, and it had kids in as well. Most annoying, was the depth – which went down to one mentre at one end which made it almost impossible to swim properly.

Other than that, it was perfectly nice, but not quite up to standard with the other places we’ve tried.

Recently, I decided it might be good to join a gym. Not because I had any intention of doing some kind of work out or using any of the gym equipment, but because gyms often have pools and I quite like to go for a swim.

So I phoned up the closest gym with a pool to me and asked how much it would be to join. Apparently though, that isn’t how it works, you have to go down there and check it out and only then will you be given a price list. Normally, that means it is really expensive.

So myself and Elina headed down there to see what it was like. The staff were very friendly and the pool was a reasonable size (15m was our estimate), though it was disappointing that it was a constant depth of 1.2 metres. The hot tub was also out of order, which was very irritating. Never the less though, it seems like a nice place and is reasonably priced for a gym (that means it’s really expensive, but no in comparison to other gyms). Might see what the others have to offer first though.

They also have a rule against using phones in there, which is really irritating as I was planning on getting a waterproof case for my iPhone for when I’m on call.