20 of the Best Outdoor Swimming Pools in the UK Annie Hayes
If your last encounter with an outdoor swimming pool was Ibiza 2019, it’s about time you made a splash in the UK’s lidos. Besides offering a welcome change of scenery after the best part of a year spent indoors, swimming is the shortcut to swole you didn’t know you needed – you’ll torch fat, build injury-free muscle, and crank up your metabolism with every length.
Aesthetics aside, hitting the pool can even help you live longer. Compared to walkers, runners and couch potatoes, men who swam regularly halved their risk of dying from all causes, research from the University of South Carolina found. Make swimming a habit, and you’ll slash your risk of chronic illness, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and stroke, the NHS states.
Last modified on Thu 22 Apr 2021 05.43 EDT
There have been some benefits to a worldwide pandemic. There was the farmer who grumbled to me that he was having to douse his fields with extra minerals because, in his words: âWeâre just not getting the air pollution we used to.â And then thereâs all the people who have taken up cold-water swimming, no doubt hoping to boost their immune systems (the evidence remains equivocal: this academic paper is worth reading).
Iâll own up here: I did wild swim every day until early December, when the water temperature was 2C, and then one day, in a downpour of freezing rain and a moment of deep personal insight, I realised how much I like warm water. Many others, made of sterner stuff, have kept it going, but now with lockdown easing there is the chance to swim outdoors in beautiful countryside without being chased by dragonflies, standing in sheep poo or swallowing algae (all things I experienced before retiring).