Swimming Pools in Cheltenham: Every Pool You Can Actually Use

Ask most people in Cheltenham how many swimming pools the town has and they will say one, maybe two. The real answer is six that a member of the public can get into, and the ones nobody names are the ones with space.

That gap matters. The leisure centre timetable fills, the lessons waiting list runs to months, and a family decides that swimming is something they will come back to later. Meanwhile three school and college pools within two miles of the town centre are running public sessions, memberships and lessons that never show up in a search for a leisure centre. This guide lists every pool, what it actually measures, who is allowed in, and what each one is good for.

Why finding a pool here is harder than it should be

Cheltenham is unusual. Most towns of its size have a single public pool and nothing else, so the only question is whether you can get a slot. Here the public pool sits alongside a Grade II listed lido and a cluster of independent schools that each built a serious pool for their own pupils and then, to cover the cost of heating it, opened the doors to the rest of us in the evenings, at weekends and in the holidays.

The catch is discoverability. A school pool has no reason to advertise in the places a parent looks. It is not on the council's leisure page, its swim school books through a form on a school foundation website, and its public sessions are listed on a page most people would never think to visit. So the demand piles onto the one leisure centre, and the school pools stay quiet.

We teach in two of those quieter pools ourselves, at Dean Close School in Cheltenham and at Everlast Gym in the Brewery Quarter, so we are not neutral about this. But the point stands whoever you learn with: if you only ever searched for a leisure centre, you have been looking at a third of the water in town.

Leisure at Cheltenham, Tommy Taylors Lane

This is the one everybody knows, run by the Cheltenham Trust on Tommy Taylors Lane, GL50 4RN, and it is a bigger site than its reputation suggests. There are three separate bodies of water. The main pool is 33 metres by 12.8 metres with up to six lanes, a shallow end of 1.3 metres, a deep end of 2.5 metres and water kept at 28.5 degrees. A pneumatic boom can split it into a 25 metre pool and a seven metre area for lessons, which is why lane swimming here is sometimes 33 metres and sometimes 25 depending on the time of day.

Beside it is a teaching pool of 23.8 metres by 9.65 metres, running from 0.3 metres to 1.2 metres deep and heated to a warmer 30.5 degrees, which is the pool most children's lessons and parent and baby sessions use. Then there is a dedicated diving pool, 12.8 metres square and four metres deep, with two one metre springboards, a three metre springboard and a five metre platform. Very few towns in the region still have one of those. A splash pad for under sixes and hoists for reduced mobility complete the picture.

Opening hours as published in September 2026 are 6am to 10pm on weekdays and 8am to 8pm at weekends. Lane swimming runs on a slow, medium and fast system. Children's lessons are billed monthly and adult courses run in ten week blocks, and we have set out the current prices in our guide to swimming lessons across Cheltenham, Gloucester and Cardiff. Check the Leisure at Cheltenham swimming page before you travel, because the lane programme changes with the school calendar.

Honest verdict: if you want to turn up, pay and swim, with no membership and no commitment, this is the pool. The council-backed price is hard to beat and the facilities are genuinely good. The trade-off is that everybody else has reached the same conclusion, so the busiest lanes and the lessons waiting list are where the pressure lands.

Sandford Parks Lido

Sandford Parks Lido on Keynsham Road, GL53 7PU, opened on 25 May 1935 and is Grade II listed, which tells you how it looks. What it is for is more surprising: a 50 metre main pool with reserved lanes, heated to between 24 and 26 degrees through the summer season, plus a children's pool kept at a warmer 30 degrees and a paddling pool. Since 1996 it has been run by a charitable trust, Sandford Lido Limited, rather than by the council, so the money you pay at the gate goes back into the pool.

The heated season runs from March until October. Since 2021 the lido has also opened from early November to early February for cold water swimming, unheated, which has quietly become one of the more popular things to do in Cheltenham on a winter morning. Lane swimmers get a length here that nowhere else in the county offers: 50 metres, two full lengths of the leisure centre's main pool, with the sky above you.

Honest verdict: unbeatable for fitness swimming and for a family day in summer, and the only pool on this list where a beginner can learn in the open air. It is also seasonal, and outdoor water at 24 degrees is a different experience from a teaching pool at 30, so it is not where we would send a nervous adult for a first lesson. Opening hours and the day's timetable are on the Cheltenham Lido website.

The three school and college pools

Each of these is a 25 metre indoor pool built for a school and open to the public in a specific way. None of them works like a leisure centre, and that is the whole point. You cannot usually walk in off the street, but if you are willing to book, join or enrol, there is water here at times when the leisure centre is heaving.

Dean Close School, Shelburne Road

A 25 metre by 10 metre indoor pool at GL51 6HE, with a shallow end of 1.06 metres and a deep end of 3.5 metres, and accessible parking, entrance, changing and toilets listed on its Swim England Poolfinder entry. Dean Close runs its own swim school for children from age four and for adults, with lessons of 30 minutes that follow the Gloucestershire school terms and intensive courses that run every morning in the holidays. Registration is through the Dean Close Foundation swim school page, and the swimming administrator works part time, so allow a few days for a reply.

This is also where Everyone Swims runs adult lessons and children's lessons in Cheltenham. The learner-friendly shallow end, the depth at the far wall for confident swimmers and the fact that parents can watch from poolside make it a good teaching pool, and it is why we chose it.

Cheltenham College Sports Centre, Thirlestaine Road

The largest of the three by width: 25 metres by 15 metres, one metre at the shallow end and 2.5 metres at the deep end, at GL53 7AB. The sports centre sells memberships covering the pool and the squash courts, and it runs pay as you go "Fun Splash" sessions for families on Sundays in term time and on set dates in the summer holidays, which is the closest any school pool in town comes to a public swim. Its swim school takes babies, children and adults. Details and dates are on the Cheltenham College Sports Centre page, or ring 01242 705551.

Cheltenham Ladies' College Health and Fitness Centre

A heated 25 metre indoor pool kept at a constant 29 degrees, using a UV disinfection system that lets it run on a low level of chlorine, which people with sensitive skin notice straight away. Access is by membership, which covers the pool, gym, classes and racket sports on one monthly fee with no long contract, and the facilities are for over 16s, with under 16s accompanied by an adult. The swimming timetable splits into lane swimming for continuous swimmers, general swimming with half the pool laned and half open, adult only sessions and family fun swims, and one to one lessons can be booked. The CLC pool page has the current timetable.

Honest verdict on all three: the school pools are where the spare capacity in Cheltenham lives, and they are warmer, quieter and more predictable than the leisure centre at peak times. The price of that is a membership, a term's enrolment or a booked session rather than a turnstile. If a monthly fee is not realistic, keep reading, because that is a barrier we exist to remove.

Everlast Gym, Brewery Quarter

Everlast Gym at Unit 16, The Brewery, Henrietta Street, GL50 4FA has the smallest pool on this list and the most central one: 20 metres by 10 metres, and 1.2 metres deep from end to end. That uniform depth is worth knowing. Nobody is ever out of their depth here, which makes it a calm place for water confidence work and for aqua aerobics, and a poor choice for anyone who wants to practise treading water or turns at a deep wall. The gym runs lane swimming and aquatic fitness sessions for members, with a sauna and spa alongside.

We run adult lessons at Everlast, and it suits complete beginners for the reason above. If you have read our piece on learning to swim as an adult and recognised yourself in the part about fear of deep water, a pool where you can always stand up is not a small thing.

Which pool for which job

Pools are not interchangeable. Length, depth and temperature decide what a pool is good at, and the six in Cheltenham divide up cleanly.

If you are weighing up lessons rather than casual swimming, the pool is only one of the decisions. Our guide to choosing swimming lessons covers the other five.

What to do when every pool says it is full

The waiting list problem in Cheltenham is real, but it is a leisure centre problem more than a town problem. Six pools do not all fill at once. When the obvious door is shut, these are the ones to try, roughly in order of how quickly they tend to open.

• Ask the school pools directly. Dean Close, Cheltenham College and CLC each run their own waiting lists, and because most families never look, they are usually shorter. A phone call gets a straighter answer than a website form.
• Take the unfashionable slot. Early weekday mornings at the leisure centre and Sunday family sessions at Cheltenham College are the times with room. A lesson at 7.30am on a Tuesday is still a lesson.
• Use the holidays. Intensive courses, five short lessons across one week, exist at Dean Close and at the leisure centre. A week of daily practice often moves a child further than a term of weekly ones, and the places are separate from the term time list.
• Say if cost is the problem. Providers rarely advertise supported places, and they go unclaimed because nobody asks. Every Everyone Swims course has subsidised places, with no means testing, no proof of income and no forms. You get one by asking.
• Widen the circle by one town. If Cheltenham genuinely has nothing, our guide to lessons across Gloucestershire and Cardiff covers Gloucester and the Forest of Dean, both within half an hour.

One more thing, because it is the honest answer for a lot of adults reading this: if what you want is to be in water and moving, not to learn a stroke, you do not need a lesson at all. Our aqua aerobics for beginners piece explains why a shallow pool and a class with no swimming required is where many people start.

Frequently asked questions