A lido? In Crouch End?

CROUCH END LIDO

Park Road Leisure Centre


Park Road


Hornsey
 N8 8JN

020 8341 3567

Added bonus:  The pool website says that Simon Pegg and David Tennant live in Crouch End. Star-spotting. Hold me back. (SEE NOTE) 

Negative points: Seasonal. 

This review will mine the gap between ‘hidden gem’ and ‘never heard of it’.

I won’t ask this question to the queue stretching along the road on a beautiful summer day, but - how come so few people I know who swim in lidos have swum in this lido? Even my friends Wendy and John, who live three yards away, haven't swum in it - mind you, they’re not a litmus test, they’re private pool people. Hmm. I know. *purses lips, mean little nod.* It’s no more off the beaten track than, say, Uxbridge (dodges while people from Crouch End throw things) and it can’t be the North/South divide, because I've swum in Parliament Hill Lido.  Somehow, this one has slipped off my lido radar. Yours too?

Nice and easy

POOLS on the PARK

Old Deer Park

Twickenham Road, Richmond TW9 2SL

020 8940 0561

Added bonus: In out in out

Negative: The flight path.

‘Don’t get your hopes up’ muttered Tara, darkly, as we approached the long, low modernist building, ‘this is an outdoor pool, not a lido’. It’s a fine distinction, I recognise what she meant, even if I can’t define it. But I admit I was expecting great things. Richmond, after all, is home of the Jaggers, the Woods, Zac Goldsmith, other, less obnoxious, people (including Tara) -  it’s posh. I found myself using French words. ‘It’s very distingue’, I pronounced badly. ‘Tres jolie’. I could see palms everywhere. Maybe I thought I was in Cannes. 

Sign says NO

Seven Islands Leisure Centre

100 Lower Road


Rotherhithe, London, SE16 2TU


0844 893 3888

Added bonus: Decathlon, two mins away, cheap sporting goods.

Negative: The photo says it.  

Sounds romantic, Seven Islands. I imagined swimming from one pool to another, past waterfalls and jungly plants, floating cocktail bars with bamboo roofs, laughter, happiness, all for a meagre £4 entrance fee.  Yeah, well. This is Rotherhithe and romance buggered off some time ago down the road to Canary Wharf, til it realized there were no yellow birds there and that these names were a con. Apparently, this concrete block of a building opened in 1965 ‘before it was finally completed’, and it might be nice if it’s ever finished. As it is, the words ‘hole’ and ‘shit’ spring to mind, not necessarily in that order. Still, I’m here to serve, so in it I swam.

Torbay, SW2

BROCKWELL LIDO

Brockwell Park

Dulwich Rd

London SE24 OPA

0207 274 3088

Added bonus: Cold and outdoors

Negative: Closed Oct to March. 

My name is Jenny, and I’m a cold water swimmer. Wrong meeting? Tooting Lido, my ‘home’ pool, is outdoor, unheated and in South London; so is Brockwell Lido, and shared attributes make it both easier and harder to review this pool. Easier because it’s near, familiar, and I know what to expect from a cold swim. But harder because I have a choice, and I would always choose Tooting. Unheated lidos are also in a different league from other pools, indoor and out, because cold and weather make such a  difference, whatever bit of the year it is. I have been known to bore on about cold-water swimming, but please look as kindly on me as you would on an alcoholic ex-air hostess doing the exit demonstration at a party.

A bit of posh

KENSINGTON LEISURE CENTRE

Walmer Road
London

W11 4PQ

020 7727 9747

Added bonus: a kiln

Negative: Changing area. As usual.

Some days, I fancy a bit of posh. Oh come on, we all do.  This was such a day, so I trilled off the tube at Holland Park and gaily skipped along wisteria-laden roads, past houses with front gardens hewn from white marble with olive trees and lavender bushes to the sounds of a man up some scaffolding singing ‘Heathcliffe, it’s me, Kathy’ in a rather beautiful falsetto. I was excited. This was going to be dead posh.