7 Best Swimming Pools In Glamorgan and Cardiff

For a first swim, yes. A competition pool is deep across its whole width, cold by design and busy with people doing lengths, and a four-year-old in that environment spends the session hanging onto an adult. Cardiff International Pool comes into its own a few years later, when a child can swim well enough to want proper space, and at that point it is much the best water in the county for them. Judge it by whether your child can already swim rather than by how impressive it looks.

The LC Swansea is the entry filed under water parks rather than swimming pools, and the classification is doing honest work — that is a building aimed at play rather than lengths. It suits confident swimmers of about seven upwards best, since slides usually carry height rules and a small child watching from the side is a miserable outcome. Western Leisure Centre/Air Venture carries a name suggesting more than one activity under the roof, which is worth investigating with a mixed-age group.

Because Penylan Library and Community Centre is categorised as a swimming pool in our records, and that is more likely to reflect a shared building or a data slip than a pool between the shelves. It is worth flagging rather than hiding: a category count of seven includes at least one entry that a parent would not recognise as a pool. Treat the honest number of conventional family swimming venues here as slightly smaller than the total suggests, and check any unfamiliar name before you drive to it.

Whether the session you are arriving for is a general swim or something else. Community pools run lessons, lane swimming, aqua classes and club training, and a family turning up during any of those finds either a rope across the pool or no space at all. Maindy Centre is recorded with outdoor as well as indoor space, which is unusual on this list and worth asking about if you have older children who would rather be outside.