7 Best Swimming Pools In County Durham

Usually, yes, because it gives you options once you are through the door. The Dolphin Centre is the substantial entry on this list, and a substantial centre tends to hold more than one body of water, which means a frightened child can be somewhere shallow and calm while everyone else swims properly. In a single-pool centre a nervous four-year-old has nowhere to retreat to except the steps, and that is where a lot of first swims quietly go wrong.

Older than an indoor one, and it is worth being clear about that with everybody before you go. Stanhope Open Air Swimming Pool is recorded with outdoor space and no indoor space, so there is no warm alternative on site once a small child runs out of enthusiasm after ten minutes. From about seven, and particularly from nine or ten, an open-air swim is a proper occasion and much more memorable than another leisure centre. Below that age it tends to be brief and tearful.

As exercise rather than entertainment, which is a distinction that decides whether the trip works. A fourteen-year-old who swims will use a lane session happily and come out having done something worthwhile. A fourteen-year-old expecting flumes will find a rectangular pool thin. If you have both a teenager and a small child, look for a centre where one can do lengths while the other is in shallow water, and accept that nobody is getting the ideal version of the afternoon.

Whichever one is nearest, truthfully, since the holiday problem is frequency rather than quality. Swimming works as a weekly habit far better than as an event, and the centre you will actually keep going back to is the one you are not dreading the drive to. Teesdale Sports Centre is recorded with outdoor space alongside indoor, which is a useful bonus in summer, but proximity beats features when you are doing this twice a week.