Parkside Pool

Unfriendly, unhelpful lifeguards, made my 10 year old daughter cry shouting at her because she jumped off the diving board wearing her goggles, one of many arcane rules, not much to do if your kid doesn’t want to swim lengths in cold water. Big disappointment. Clearly catering for adult lap swimmers and no one else. One short visit was enough for us.

Parkside Swimming Pool, yes, it can be bad, but YES, it can definatly be better than anyone says.
I went with two friends just to have a laugh, and we did!
There are two flumes to choose from, one where you can go alone, and one where you can flume with a friend.
You also have 3 pools to choose from, of course we only used 2 of them because one is for little children to wade around and splash out! Good fun, eh? The second pool is not as deep as the third, but this can be a good thing, as we liked this one the best as it meant we could stand and show of our tricks without having to get tired of swimming up and up and up again. However if deep water is your choice, in the third pool they have 3 lanes. 2 to do lengths and 1 where you can hang around in the deep.
We found this place a great amount of fun and will still choose to go to Parkside, it’s not near as bad as anyone has said, I believe that yes, sometimes the hiegene is a little bit out of line, however, whenever I have been to the pool they do a clean out every 3 hours.
This affect is new to 2011, which is a shame it wasn’t done earlier, however better late then never, no?

It’s such a shame about this pool, I learned to swim here as a child and it’s just not as good as the old pools.
Firstly, the air temperature is too cold for small children, in the winter it’s terrible, especially in the changing rooms.
The flumes have been out of order on the last two occasions we’ve been.
The changing rooms are shambolic and often dirty, and there’s not enough provision for families.
On the upside, there’s an active and fun diving club for kids and the café is ok. We often drive the 27 miles to the Waterworld pool in Thetford which is way nicer.

Parkside is the biggest swimming pool in Cambridge. As well as the main pool it has two baby pools and a diving pool with an adjustable floor. It also has two water slides. There are baby swimming classes which are pretty good. The temperature of the pool is sometimes a bit on the cool side. The changing facilities are OK. They do have a disabled changing room and a few family rooms which have nappy changing facilities. IT has the Queen Anne carpark nearby which is handy although you do have to pay for parking.

Parkside Pool has recently undergone refurbishment, It is now not quite as large as previously, but has a seperate diving pool which i believe also converts into a baby pool for specific session times. They have put in 2 flumes which are great fun to go down –especially for kids. When i went down you sat on inflatable rings — they have double and single ones and it is really quite good. the price for a swim is standard for cambridge. The changing room is large with a lot of cubicles. Parking is quite expensive but convenient — you use Queen Anne Terrace car park.