People who complain about "cold" swimming pools on holiday.

VincentHanna said:
You're missing out.

I'm not somebody that sits around a hotel in sun loungers, but it's also nice to come back from being out all day, and have a 10 minute dip in the pool before getting ready for the evening.
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Same, get bored to death sitting by a pool or on a beach all day, i'm either out and about exploring or snorkeling for hours. However near the end of the day as things are winding down or your back from a day out, being able to get into a pool and a float around is rather lovely.
 
VincentHanna said:
You're missing out.

I'm not somebody that sits around a hotel in sun loungers, but it's also nice to come back from being out all day, and have a 10 minute dip in the pool before getting ready for the evening.
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I haven't either ! I can't swim so I have never gone into any pool in any hotels, even the Cordis in HK, a 5 star with a pool on the roof at like the 40+ floors.

We did do a photoshoot though, the hotel was nice enough to let us shoot after it technically closed in the evening.
 
Well, if you are going to be active in the water ie swimming then you are going to be just fine. But if you are going to be just sitting doing nothing then eventually your body will get cold.
 
To be honest id rather swim in a cool pool than a heated pool



I love plunging in to cold sea and chilled waters in the UK in the summer.

Once your in its actually quite nice and you then don't notice it
 
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apatia77 said:
Well, if you are going to be active in the water ie swimming then you are going to be just fine. But if you are going to be just sitting doing nothing then eventually your body will get cold.
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Not really my experience.

As long as you swim for a short amount of time when you first get in, you can generally then stay in the water not doing a lot for ages after that.
 
Raymond Lin said:
I can't swim
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Utterly bonkers but neither can I.
We had swimming ‘lessons’ at school but they were utterly useless. They didn’t seem to care about those who couldn’t swim and concentrated on improving the technique of those who already could.
 
When you guys say you can't swim, do you mean you can't swim on a technical level or straight up would drown if you couldn't touch the bottom?
 
SixTwoSix said:
When you guys say you can't swim, do you mean you can't swim on a technical level or straight up would drown if you couldn't touch the bottom?
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Considering I've only had 2 swimming lessons when i was like 8 or something and at that time I was still using those arm floaty things...I am not in high confidence that i won't straight up drown.
 
I actually could swim more or less as a kid, but because I'd already been labelled as totally inept at sport they just kind of auto-sorted me into the no-hopers in the little pool.
 
VincentHanna said:
What's the deal with this? I've never understood it.

If you go away on holiday, chances are the pool won't be heated because that costs a lot of money to do so. But I've yet to use a pool on holiday that's ever been too cold to be in.

Yet I've heard/read so many complaints about it, literally in real life (usually whilst I am swimming in the pool) or people complaining in Tripadvisor reviews.

People dip their feet in and go "Ooooh it's so cold" or they get in for 10 seconds and then scarper because they can't hack it, when all they need to do is swim around for 30 seconds to acclimate to the temperature of the pool.

I'm sure if you are in Iceland in winter, or even in europe and the outside temperature is 5°C or something then the pool will be bloody cold, but I can't say I've ever wanted to use a holiday pool in that sort of weather anyway. But when the suns been on it and it's 20+ °C there's no such thing as a pool that's too cold IMO.
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I think people expect the pool to be "comfortable", not "warm" and as several people have said different people have different levels of tolerance for the cold, ranging from the northerners who'll go swimming in the sea dodging icebergs (preferable to dodging the brownbergs we're getting now tbh), to those that can't really stand it being below a reasonably high temperature, and then there are the elderly etc who might feel the cold more anyway.

One of the best ways to deal with this without artificial heating (or with minimal heating) is to make the pool larger but with an average depth that is quite low and then paint it so that it naturally absorbs more heat from the sun.
Wallingford on Thames has/had quite a nicely done outdoor pool*, basically you had the normal size pool but it was effectively heated by a very large (from memory about twice the surface area) paddling pool next to it that was only 15-30cm deep, with the water being pumped between the two (and I suspect filtered on it's way back to the main one, as IIRC it had a shallow "waterfall"/slope from the higher main pool to the paddling pool).

Also you're forgetting that 20c sun takes time to heat water, how long that is depends on the depth of the water and the volume, 20c on a normal pool is going to take a fairly long time to warm it noticeably if it's been cold over night, especially if it's not been particularly sunny the day before, but if you design the pool intelligently you can massively speed up its natural heating, but even then it takes time so if you go out at say 10am the air might be 20c, but the water in the pool might have cooled right down overnight to near the night time temp (and in the last week or two here that's been as low as something like 10c).

*We used to go camping there when I was a kid, and whilst the pool could be quite cool it warmed up quite quickly on sunny days due to the design with it's very large effective surface area compared to the volume of water.
 
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A non-heated swimming pool can feel like you are swimming in the cold sea. Refreshing but not really relaxing.

When I went to Capri we had our own private pool that was non-heated, 40c heat so why would you need it heated, right? Well, it was absolutely freezing - borderline unpleasant. If it wasn’t August, it could have been unbearable.

A heated swimming pool is much, much nicer. This doesn’t mean that the water is ‘warm’ by the way, it just means that it isn’t freezing.

So yeah, I’ll take the heated pool 10x over and yes it would make me decide whether I wanted to book somewhere or not.
 
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Uugghh, people go to other places with people and pools?

Disgusting.

Edit: Next people will be saying they do all inclusive holidays. Foul.


:p
 
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