Avignon - Olympic pool, Île de la Barthelasse

It's easy to miss this pool, as it is "hidden" along a driveway behind a cafe and restaurant. We found it on our last morning in Avignon when we went for a walk along the island in the Rhône, Île de la Barthelasse.

The weather wasn't ideal for swimming, and the pool had only just opened for the season, but a couple of souls were ploughing up and down and a few kids were playing around.

We had a tea and a coffee at the poolside lovely cafe, which is separate to the pool itself.

Visit: 15 June 2008

Piscines Bernat Picornell, Barcelona

Visit: 20 June 2008

Location map from this website: Barcelona Yellow
The Bernat Picornell pools on Montjuic in Barcelona were opened in 1970 for the European swimming championships and modernised for the Olympic Games in 1992. We enjoyed our visit to the swimming centre, which includes a gym, outdoor and indoor pools, but didn't visit during the Friday night nude swimming session - lol!

This is a pool for "serious" swimmers, or at least those who don't mind deep water. Not suitable for pool play with young children. Depth ranges from 2.3 to 3.8 metres.

Public pool, Monaco

This public swimming pool in Monaco is located right at the port. What a wonderful facility it is. It costs only about 4,70 E (3 E for kids) and you can stay as long as you like.

A little while ago, Jilly from Monte Carlo Daily Photo featured the pool, and asked "how long does it take to fill?" I got it right! (It's about 5.5 hours). And then I got to swim in it, which Jilly also recorded for posterity.

I was quite surprised when I dived in to discover that it's salt water. For some reason I expected fresh. It was a terrific pool to swim in, and apart from some serious laps, I had fun mucking around with Ben.









For some, the public pool is totally unnecessary...a private pool on your private yacht.

Cavalieri Hilton, Rome - Swimming in modern Rome

We really didn’t enjoy our stay in this over-priced, over-blown hotel (we were there for a conference).

Everything looks “luxurious” on the surface, and there is that level of obsequious service (every member of staff greets you EVERY time you walk down a corridor, even if only 5 seconds earlier!) that some people think is an expression of appropriate "I'm boss, you serve" relationships.

There are pool attendants in crisp white uniforms, and many of the guests have deep tans and lots of gold bling. Surface sophistication. They charge outrageous prices for everything - eg a hamburger is 25 Euro, a small coke 8 E.

There is “free” use of the hotel pool for guests (and it is a good pool, big enough for real exercise), BUT just try to sit anywhere, or even put your book and towel down, and you’ll be pounced upon and told you must pay a 16 Euro sun lounge fee. My son went down with his book and was disappointed he couldn't stay and had nowhere to put his things. (The next day we paid the 16E of course)

I fully understand that in some cultures you pay to get access to a beach and sun lounger, but when you are paying $600 a night for a room, you expect that you can effectively use the pool!

The opening hours are quite restrictive if you are there for work and want to exercise before or after the work day. It opens at 9am, so no before-breakfast laps, and although suppposedly open til 7pm, the pool attendants start packing up about 5.

Although swimming laps during opening hours, I was tapped on the hand and told I was swimming "contrary to regulations". I never found out which regulation, but assume it may have been because it was cloudy? Or perhaps because I put my towel down on a chair undercover? I said that if a manager cared to come and explain the regulation to me perhaps we would have something to discuss, but no-one appeared, of course.

The hotel allows locals to use the pool for about 45E a day on weekends. It's one of the few pools in Rome. We tried to find a pool to use during our stay elsewhere, but the only alternatives seemed to be a single public pool which hadn't opened yet (the seson began on June 1, and even though temperatures were in the high 20s, I was told it was "too cold" yet), or a 30E swim at another pool.

This (Lapping) Life

Above: Ian Thorpe aka Rick Kane; Below: Shane Gould aka Me.

I was delighted to see another swimmer share his love in this weekend's This Life contributor column in The Weekend Australian newspaper. Rick Kane, I don't know who you are, but you captured my thoughts beautifully. The only differences are that I usually DO score a lane to myself, as I use a gym, and the bulk of people are into the sweaty, running shoes stuff; I swim 60 laps about 4 times a week (80 if I'm on holidays); and my magic number is 23 - the lap when, having let the mind go blank other than the repetitive mantra of lap-counting, most of the world's problems and complex work-related issues are solved. Swimming to me is meditation, transcendence, sensuality (the water feels like a silk scarf running over my body).

Here's Rick Kane's piece entitled This (Lapping) Life from the The Weekend Australian May 17-18 2008:
"Swimming laps is all about numbers. For starters, I’m 44 and I go swimming at 6am (ouch). The first time I ventured to the pool (I mean leisure centre) at that early hour, I thought I would be bothering the guy who had drawn the short straw to open up.
I imagined a pot-bellied, sleepy-eyed grump wheezing on a fag, clutching a coffee, mumbling something like, “Mate, give us a sec, I’ll crank up the generators and then she’ll be right.” I was wrong.
At 6am your local leisure centre is going off. People turn up in droves. There’s a queue t. In June, with temperatures hovering at 5C, there may be 40 or more people of all ages (well, over 35), queuing to get in there and get on a walking machine, or spin cycle or bench press, or whatever it is you do for exercise. In my case, it’s to go swimming.
I love swimming. You’ve got to love an activity that has a stroke called butterfly that involves the most ungainly actions. There are five lanes allocated for laps. Every swimmer hopes for a lane to themselves and every swimmer is disappointed. I swim 2km, three times a week. As I swim in a 25m pool, I swim 80 laps ach session, but who’s counting? I am.
My convoluted counting process involves calling ach lap a quarter (as in time: 1:15, 1:30, 1:45, lap 2, and so on). And, yes, I’ve even counted the amount of strokes it takes for each lap (about 40), swimming laps is taxing, invigorating and fun. It is also as boring as watching someone who is boring.
The repetition may suggest a mundane activity, but for me swimming is pretty close to transcendence. Gliding through cool water can free the body and has the potential to free the mind. While swimming laps, I try not so much to solve everyday problems but move through them. Counting laps maintains a rhythm (as does the stroke), but water is the melody, allowing you to free-form freestyle. Everything else is of little moment.
The light at that time of day, just as the sun is rising, is striking. It produces hazy shades ad textures across the pool. Underwater, where a swimmer is mainly looking, these shades reflect patterns and beats across the tiles that move and distort as the swimmer pushes through the water.
And away the mind goes, maybe to a daughter’s smile, having been told her class project is excellent, or the scent of a bakery from a half-forgotten holiday, or to the woman swimming laps in the next lane. Swimming gives you space to open up the value of a reflection. It is the languorous dance of the solitary. Swimming is sensual and water a sweeping beauty.
I push myself. But I have terrible rhythm and I swear it is the reason I can’t push myself harder. There is, well, um, another reason for not pushing myself harder. Hey, I put in a lot of effort swimming 2km, or, wait for it, 3200 freestyle arm strokes. I swim non-stop. When I finish, I’m huffing and puffing. But then I go to wipe sweat from my brow and all I’m wiping is excess chlorinated water.
For all the effort Thorpie and I exert, there is no freakin’ sweat to show the world that we work damn hard. That just doesn’t add up. Still, I keep at it, with the numinous thoughts and the numbers swimming around in my head. "

Swimming in Fiction: Enid Blyton's Malory Towers

The Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton was a favourite of mine during my childhood. Darrel Rivers, the main character is a jolly-hockey-sticks all round good egg, who manages to get into a few scrapes on her inevitable journey to Head Girl. In first term, we meet most of the characters who remain throughout the series. Mary-Lou is a scardey-cat, frightened of everything: spiders, the dark, the swimming pool. The pool is a rock-hewn one, at the base of a cliff in Cornwall. Gwendoline, a particularly nasty girl doesn't like the pool either. She ducks Mary-Lou in the pool, holding Mary-Lou under too long. Darrel sees her and gives her a whack. For her troubles she is ordered out of the pool by Head Girl, Katherine. Eventually, Darrel, and best friend Sally orchestrate a near-drowing so Mary-Lou must save Darrel, and thus gain confidence. Swimming and the pool feature again in the final term, when sporty and boastful new girl Amanda, an Olympic hopeful, arrives from the burned down Trennigan Towers. Amanda has been banging on all term about going swimming in the sea rather than just the pool, and ignoring warnings about strong currents. Of course she gets into trouble and has to be saved by another girl. All that pride and a lesson hard learned! "One of the things that Darrel liked best of all was the big swimming pool down by the sea. This had been hollowed out of a stretch of rocks, so that it had a nice rocky uneven bottom. Seaweed grew at the sides, and sometimes the rocky bed of the pool felt slimy. But the sea swept into the big natural pool each day, filled it, and made lovely waves all across it. It was a sheer delight to bathe there. The coast itself was too dangerous for bathing. The tides were so strong, and no girl was allowed to swim in the open sea. But anyone was safe in the pool. One end was quite deep, and here there were diving boards and a chute, and a fine spring board for running dives." - First Term at Malory Towers (1946) The pool, and the swimming incidents have featured on the covers of various editions: In her book The Dorset Days of Enid Blyton, Vivienne Endecott discusses the Malory Towers pool: "It was a school swimming pool like no other, and countless Blyton readers have dreamt about midnight feasts on moonlit nights around its rocky perimeter. Whilst the pool itself never existed outside Enid Blyton's imagination, it is likely to have been based on two seawater pools, one in Cornwall and the other in Dorset. The Malory Towers pool was big. It was deep and had high diving boards. It even had a water chute. It had everythign that could be ebjoyed at the most fashionable of 1930s lidos. When Enid Blyton remarried in 1942 she had honeymooned in Cornwall, and it is possible that she would have seen the fantastic Jubilee Pool at Penzance that had diving boards and water chutes, and was filled with sea water." (see postcard below) "For a school to have a pool in the 30s or 40s was very unusual. Yet there was a school at Langton Matravers near Swanage that did have a pool of its own, on the rocks at the base of the cliff. Durnford Prep School had a tradition for the boys to swim naked in the sea from Dancing Ledge, but their headmaster knew that thr coast was dangerous. So he ordered that a small swimming pool be blown out of the rocks so that the boys could bathe in safety. School children and countless tourists have used the pool ever since. Enid Blyton may have swum there as well since it is only a three mile walk along the coast path from Swanage. "

In June 2008, I re-visited Dorset (where I used to live) and did the walk along the coast path from Durlston Head to Dancing Ledge. Here's some pics I took of the rock pool at Dancing Ledge mentioned above: "It would not have taken too much imagination to combine the real location of a school swimming pool that was down in the rocks and the elaborate facilities of the pool at Penzance to devise the most famous school swimming pool ever written about." Here's a more recent pic of the Penzance Lido: To my mind, however, Blyton's Malory Towers pool is more reminiscent of either this pool at Bude in Cornwall: or Westward Ho! in Devon: "Among the rocks on the southern end of Westward Ho! beach, this pool has been in existence for at least 120 years and was renovated in the spring. Local people are passionate about the pool, which the local council, like other authorities, regards it as a bit of a health and safety nightmare." From this Guardian article. or even this pool hewn into Table Rocks at Whitley Bay, in Northumberland:

Swimtrek - swimming tourism

Must say non-pool swimming is not my favourite, but I am intrigued by and attracted to this concept.

Swimtrek: http://www.swimtrek.com/

World's only swimming holiday operator. Swim your way around The Virgin islands, Sardinia, Gozo, Comino and Malta, Croatia, the Cyclades, Bavarian Lakes, Isles of Scilly, The Inner hebrides (brrrr....), Finland, The Thames , The English lake District, the hellespont, Alcatraz.
Scenic swimming Croatia - http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/destinations/croatia/article3243955.ece

Mind-goggling

The quest for the perfect pair of goggles...

After I come home from a swim, I rinse my stuff off in the laundry tub, and hang googles and hand paddles over the tap and leave flippers, cap and ear plugs to dry. Over the years I've been looking for the "perfect" pair of goggles. Anti-fog, UV protection, comfortable silicon surrounds, easily adjustable, good vision, leak-proof....and so has my son. We've got quite a collection - there are a couple more rejects hanging over the rail on the door handle as well...

So now, at last, I think I've found them. Prescription goggles - they're the ones in the front. At last I can see the end of the pool clearly, and everything else under the water.