Wavelengths Leisure Centre

I go swimming here all the time because I live nearby. But it is driving me mad that the showers are always freezing and the hairdryers are always broken. Last time I went we even had to leave because there was a poo in the pool from the school kids in the previous session - pretty grim! Other than that the pool is nice but the rest of it lets it down. 

The problems with this place are many. I live nearby, so will not give up the pools because it is simply too convenient. Once you are in the water, all is well. But the changing rooms are not great, there has been no hot water in the pool changing rooms for months because of court action (about to change, soon, apparently and the yoga/pilates classes really, really, really stink. Bad, anemic instructor who clearly doesn't give a damn or really know much. I would get much more out of this place if I could (I pay the monthly fee) but really, I am paying for swimming. That's it. After that, I flee. the 1 star is for the pool.

took my 3 yr old grandson to the jelly babies swim on a saturday and was very disapointed , it says on the web site that their are floats, toys and other things for them to play with, on getting there i asked a life guard where all the toys etc were as the pool was empty apart from children and nothing at all to amuse them. My answer from life guard was a shrug of the shoulders, so wont be visiting this fun session again as it was just a session without the fun

Updated 26 August 2011

Our Thursday after school swim this week took us to Deptford – a short hop across the river on the train from London Bridge. Much has changed since our last visit 4 years ago – the area is now in the middle of a major regeneration programme . A new 6 lane 25m pool has been added to the complex – it looked great even though we did not sample. The leisure pool is tired and disappointing. After school slots are dominated by swimming lessons from 4 till 6.30 – no slides open, no wave machine, no water jets, no bubble banks and of course no diving. Not much room for jumping either. The large whirl pool is broken down and the “swim round the island” feature has been gated off – good old health and safety. Seems a shame to have all these features and then make them only available at weekends and school holidays. We will be back – the two large slides looked great…..Due a refurbishment – the leisure pool showers were the worst we have used anywhere – only 1 of the 6 showers sort of works at a time

Update

So we went back to try the slides as part of the summer grand tour and they were rubbish. Only 1 water jet so they were really, really slow and you had to use a mat. Rumour has it they are having a makeover for the Autumn so we may come back next year. Pretty dull wave machine here and as for the queues – the longest I have seen at any pool we have been to. Cannot understand why. Rating downgraded to 1*

I thought I’d review the gym as no one else has.
Well, I was a member and regular user (3-4 times a week) for over a year and I cancelled it a couple of months ago. Partly due to boredom with my fitness regime and wanting to do something else, but also because of the declining quality and rising costs of membership meant it was just not worth it anymore.

It’s a pretty small gym, 6-7 treadmills, 5 or 6 cross-trainers, 2 rowing machines, 5 or 6 stepping machines, plenty of bikes (although all were the reclining kind apart from 2 upright) about 10 different resistance weight machines and a selection of free weights (I won’t comment on the free weights selection as I didn’t use them).

Pluses: opened at 6:30am until 10pm at night weekdays, staff are friendly and usually (but not always) available for guidance and tips. Mostly it wasn’t that busy and although I went early mornings during the week, when I went other times, including weekday evenings, you could usually get the machine you wanted.

Negatives: Machine reliability was AWFUL! When something would break down, they’d stick a note up (We’re sorry for the inconvenience, an engineer is expected in the next two weeks.. etc, etc) but the repairs were NEVER done within 2 weeks. These signs would stay up for months at a time, particularly for the treadmills. So limiting availability during peak times.
For several weeks before I stopped going the air con also wasn’t working, or was switched off. You can imagine how pleasant that was.
If you’re like me and tend to watch whatever is on the TV screens while working out, going at 6:30 am you were stuck with infomercials for steam cleaners, window wiping, and (counter-productively for the gym) Zumba and other DVD workout programmes because that’s all that was on the channels that were left on during the day. Thanks to those continuous infomercials being on I quit the gym to get one of the DVD workout boxsets instead.
Changing rooms were naaaaasty… cleaning seemed to be regular, they just stank, and the showers just looked disgusting. I always changed and showered at home. I will say the changing facilities for the pool are better than those for the gym.

All in all, this might once have been worth the membership fee (cheaper than LA Fitness, Fitness First, etc), but they raised prices several times during the year and quality conversely just deteriorated.

However while I was there I heard a rumour that they were planning on switching the gym space (above the pool) and the library over – the library being the bigger space.