Health Hydro

Dark, wet and foggy. Perfect evening for a trip to the other side of Bath for reopening night at the Swindon Health Hydro.

Built in 1891 by the Great Western Railway Medical Fund Society, the now Grade II listed building once hosted a range of health services, from doctors and dentists to a drug dispensary. The two pools, Turkish baths and washing baths provided swimming and bathing facilities to the people of Swindon. At the time, there was nothing like it anywhere in the world.

I have been waiting to swim here for a while. It has been closed for refurbishment for a few years, but I am in the area and noticed by chance last week that it was reopening on the 19th of January.

2026 seems to be the year of pool opening day swims. Lichfield a couple of weeks ago, and now the Health Hydro tonight. I have prebooked the evening session.

I park in the multistorey just around the corner. They have a problem with their ticket system so it is free parking. Result. I make the two minute dash through the rain to the pool entrance.

There is not really a reception as such, just a pop-up desk and staff members with iPads. Possibly they are still waiting to install the final setup. They do, however, have fancy QR code scan gates.

The first hall is an open format gym. Through doors at the far end is a locker hall with separate mens and womens changing rooms, then back out again to another door leading to the pool hall. The lockers not being in the changing rooms is a proper pain. More so when you get out wet, then have to lug clothes and bags into the changing rooms, only to go around the corner again to the showers. All very awkward.

I do appreciate this is an old listed building and they are heavily restricted in what they can do, but the locker setup made no sense to me.

Out onto the pool deck. I am not quite sure what I am expecting. It is opening day, after all. Will it be packed? No.

It is a four lane 33.3m pool, although there are five 'lane lines' tiled on the bottom of the pool. The lanes are basic rope lanes, and it is an old tub-style pool, so if this were a busy session it would get quite choppy.

The pool hall itself is impressive. The barrel vault ceiling is spectacular and very prominent. Swindon is famous for its Victorian Great Western Railway history, and it feels fitting that the iron used to support the vaulted ceiling was made in the nearby railway works. A bit different from track.

Visually, the building is impressive, but as I glance around I notice the restoration feels quite light. The upper deck walls look like they are still waiting for re-tiling, and there is still work going on around the exterior of the building. Fair play if they have decided to focus on reopening as quickly as possible and continue restoration alongside that.

When I jump in there is conversation at the lane end about the pool historically being freezing. It definitely is not that now. What I do quickly discover is that it is a pool of two halves. Just past the halfway point towards the deep end, the water transitions to absolutely freezing. I am guessing they have only just turned the heaters on and the pool is still warming through. It was certainly better mixed by the end of the session.

All four lanes are initially labelled slow. I make a start and notice the lifeguard swap the sign to fast. Validation.

I do not want to push it too hard. There are a few people being shown around the pool, others just floating about, and on top of that the pool feels like swimming through treacle.

I have no real plan tonight. I thought about doing 1600m, then realised the 33.3m maths was awkward. I work through a kilometre, then start on a few 133m sets, four lengths at a time, with no real plan for how many and no expectation of pace. I figure I will just keep going until I am bored.

When I start there are seven or eight other swimmers in the pool. I then get a good 20 minutes with the pool entirely to myself, before it fills up again.

Swim done. I finish with eighteen of those 133m sets for a total swim distance of 3,400m.

Back in the car and head five minutes west to the Swindon DoubleTree for what might be my cheapest ever Hilton night rate. Must be a global parking system outage tonight. The hotel parking system is down too. Free parking for all in Swindon.