Wyre Forest Leisure Centre. Have Goggles, Will Travel Pool #110

Busy, new(ish) leisure centre with odd ideas about pool lane layout!

Friday morning, drive back from Bristol with a quick stop (almost) on the way home in Kidderminster.

Arrive at the new 25m community pool to find only three large, busy double lanes. This might be a short swim!

The leisure centre was very busy, 10am Friday morning, but the local community was out in force, and not just in the pool! The centre incorporates a range of sports and community facilities, including a cafe, kid’s play centre and even a climbing wall!

Managed to complete a slow 1,650m, dodging between the other ‘fast lane’ swimmers - before my Garmin swim watch died. I don’t know why; I’m sure the battery looked pretty go before I started, but as I went to hit start on another 100m, I found nothing but a blank screen! Thankfully, I later found it did save the session up to that point.

Strike up a conversation with the other eight ‘fast lane’ swimmers, make my apologies for disrupting their swim, but actually find support for my frustration!

Chat with a manager passing by on the pool deck, query the three-lane layout, which he agrees is annoying, but when they’ve added the full six lanes in the past, they had complaints from other swimmers about being ‘splashed’, at which point Karen in the next lane pipes in with ‘no way do we want six lanes, people don’t want to get their hair wet!). Karen paddles off, and we continue to pull apart the hilarious lane signs (photos below). The fast lane requires completing 25m lengths at a consistent 20-second pace - I didn’t even manage that today. Most others were close to a minute.

Anyway… not my local pool!