Posts Tagged ‘the marriot’

While my experiences had been positive enough to make it worth joining Virgin Active’s gym in The Light (previously Esporta), subsequence experiences have been disappointing.

First off, it was busy on an evening. This is contradictory to what Jen from the membership department told me, who said the pool was quite on an evening. Of course, she is from membership and so is going to say this, but you expect a little bit of truth, even if it is heavily moderated.

Secondly, the changing rooms where just dirty. Discarded towels lying around, a few chocolate bar wrappers on the floor and the floor was in need of a good mop. Their second hot tub was also still out of order and has been since last year. They still have one, so it’s not critical I guess, but still it has been two weeks now. The hair dryers are also quite underpowered.

Add this to the fact that the water makes Elina feel sick I think I’m settled that The Marriot is the gym for me. I wouldn’t say I had a bad experience at Virgin Active, because it’s been fine and the staff have been friendly. But The Marriot is a definite winner for me.

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.