Oak Park Active Living Centre pool photo
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Oak Park Active Living Centre

Walsall, Staffordshire, UK

Friday, 21 April 2023

Oak Park Active Living Centre pool photo

Friday morning swim not too far from home.

Typical UK weather, shorts and t-shirt yesterday, miserable, wet and grey today! (and now sunny again as I write this, four hours later).

Would usually head to my regular Wyndley swimming pool today for a Friday morning swim, but as I'm on a mission to add two pools per week at the moment, I'll make the 20-minute drive to what I initially thought was a brand new pool - which happens to be not too far from my local saltwater fish store where I but frozen food for my fish!

The pool was split into three lap swim lanes, divided by speed, with a public swim session in the other half.

The pool deck is surprisingly large and well-lit. Still, it would benefit from some natural light through the large windows surrounding the pool, each heavily tinted to the point that it looked like a cold winter evening outside, not a (cloudy) Spring mid-morning!

The water has a slightly weird, saline taste and is quite 'murky' below the surface. I don't actively drink the pool water, but this was the sort of dry-your-mouth-out water!

Completed an initial 1km at what I thought was a decent pace, but the watch clocked in at 15:04, which isn't great - it makes me wonder if my usual Wyndley swimming pool (my benchmark for swim times) is actually shorter than we think!

Finish up a total of 3.2km, then head to pick up some food for the fish on the way home.

The pool and facilities were great, however (unless I got the wrong end of the stick), an older lady in the slow lane was moaning about me having a fast lane all to myself whilst she had to make 5-minute there-and-back-head-up breaststroke trips with two other people in her lane! She was still going on about it after I finished another 300m.

The car park features a coal mine headstock monument, I beleive the centre is built on the site of the once Walsall Wood Colliery, a coal mine that closed in 1964.

  • Oak Park Active Living Centre gallery image
  • Oak Park Active Living Centre gallery image
  • Oak Park Active Living Centre gallery image

Swim Stats

  • 3200m swim distance
  • 1:29 pace / 100m
  • Garmin Swim 2 Watch

Pool Review

(55 / 100)

I thought this was a brand new pool during the swim; everything was clean and looked like new, I've now found it's seven years old - which isn't old, but it still looks new-new!

Pool Details

  • Indoor pool
  • Pool length 25m
  • 6 lanes

Oak Park Active Living Centre

Coppice Road, Walsall Wood, Walsall WS9 9BH, UK