Swimming Pools

When I was a small boy my idea of a swimming pool was this, the Chini Club, a pool which, because my father belonged to the prestigious Mombasa Club, whose buildings are at the top of the picture, was available to the family. I have written about the Chini Club before - here - because it was one of the few places on the island of Mombasa where we could swim, its surrounding waters being home to a nasty collection of sharks.

While the Chini Club pool was always warm, so we could spend hours and hours swimming in it, when I was sent 'home' to a prep school in England I faced the horror of an English swimming pool, the White Rock baths in Hastings, to which the whole school was transported once a week during the summer term. The place stank of chlorine and, while it was heated, I always felt chilly there, and was relieved each week when the ordeal was over.

If anything, the swimming pool at my public school, Bradfield, was even worse, as....

....it was not heated, the pool water being cleaned by opening a valve at the top end of the pool which allowed the 'fresh' waters of the River Pang to flow though it.

Despite my distaste for the pool I was good enough to win a place in the school swimming team, coached by JBA Burridge, though my memory is that we weren't very good, and usually lost our matches against other schools.

Perhaps it's as a result of this that I don't really like swimming pools, however....

....warm and picturesque they may be - this is the 'horizon' pool at Saadani in Tanzania. If I swim, which is rarely, it has to be in the sea, though I have only once made the mistake of swimming in Scottish waters.

Picture of the Chini Club courtesy Tony Chetham.