Category × County
7 Best Water Activities In Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire's water list is really an outdoor pool list. Wotton Pool, Cirencester Open Air Swimming Pool and Sandford Parks Lido are three open-air swimming venues inside a county total of seven, and they alone justify searching this heading. Two further entries, Cotswold Water Park & Beach and Cotswold Country Park and Beach, look very much like the same stretch of water described twice under different names and different categories. Read the list as five distinct places rather than seven.
Top water activities in Gloucestershire
Showing 1–7 of 7
WaterSUP Gloucester
Swimming PoolsWotton Pool
WaterCirencester Open Air Swimming Pool
WaterThe Wave Bristol
National ParksCotswold Water Park & Beach
WaterSandford Parks Lido
BeachesCotswold Country Park and Beach
The Wave Bristol is the strongest entry for older children and the one carrying a caveat: it holds a Gloucestershire listing but a Bristol name, so check where it actually stands before setting off. SUP Gloucester is paddleboarding and wants a child who already swims confidently. For anyone younger than that, the lidos are the answer.
Water Activities in Gloucestershire: FAQs
Three outdoor pools. Which one?
It comes down to what your family copes with badly. Open-air pools run colder than indoor ones, and that decides more visits than facilities ever do. Sandford Parks Lido, Wotton Pool and Cirencester Open Air Swimming Pool are all outdoors, so a child who feels the cold will last a shorter time than you have planned for. After that, choose on the shallow end and whether there is grass to lie on afterwards.
Are the two Cotswold entries the same place?
They are listed separately and carry different categories, one under national parks and one under beaches, but the names describe the same idea and very probably overlap on the ground. Cotswold Water Park & Beach and Cotswold Country Park and Beach are better treated as one destination to check than as two options to weigh against each other. Duplication like this makes a county's count look healthier than it is.
What about a child who cannot swim?
The lidos, with the usual caution: an open-air pool has a shallow end and somebody watching, and a non-swimmer stays within arm's reach of an adult throughout. SUP Gloucester and The Wave Bristol both assume water competence, and neither is the place to discover your child lacks it. Cotswold Water Park & Beach is open water, a different risk again, and needs adult attention the whole time.