I expect this to be the last pool review for a while as I won’t be swimming pool hopping so much until next summer again I guess.

dCoque is basically the home of Luxembourg’s national sports and entertainments centre and it has a swimming complex. It also has a climbing wall but I haven’t been there yet as all my time is Swimming. All the Time, All the Swimming.

It was closed for most of the summer, and while I was there back in February once before I had managed to structure my life in such a way as I could fit in the two hours you need for a reasonable swimming trip, I hadn’t built a habit and when I started swimming more seriously in the summer, I’d pretty much forgotten the details of the pool. So I decided to wait for it to reopen before writing it up.

If you look at the swimming pool reviews on Swimmer’s Guide, you’ll find a lot of positive things said about dCoque. I tend to concur. The complex has a bunch of pools to which the public has access to three, namely the paddling pool for kids, a shallow 25m pool and a 50 pool. There is also a separate diving pool but I do not know how much access is granted to the diving section. When I was there on Wednesday or Thursday this week it was being used for scuba training and it has several diving platforms as well. I’ve done the diving board  thing twice, and gotten profoundly sick both times so regretfully I’ve given up on ever being the type of person who can dive from a 10 metre platform and land successfully and gracefully in the water.

Swimming wise, I believe there are two training pools, a 50m and a 25m which are used for clubs and classes. I have not seen them Outside those, there is an arena 50m pool which is 2.2m deep and a learning pool which scales from 0.6m to 1.35m. I swam in both of them.

People have told me they find the pools in dCoque cold. I don’t quite get this as for me,they are not the coldest pools I have swum in in Luxembourg – I really think that’s Bonnevoie – but unlike Les Thermes, the temperature is comfortable enough to swim in. During the week, evidence suggests the pools can be busy.

Of the two of them, I swam most in the 25m pool because that’s the length I’m kind of used to at this point. It’s a stainless steel pool – I didn’t remember this from the last time I was there, and the main disadvantage is the 60cm depth at one end as my freestyle stroke has enough of a sweep for me to hit the floor if I’m not paying attention. I wasn’t alone swimming lengths in that pool which on one front is gratifying; on the other hand, plans I had around my own training ideas for the next three months are being reframed in terms of “get used to the 50m pool”. Despite being busy, the 50m really is a very easy pool to swim in for the short space of time I was in it. It’s a novelty to be in a pool that has a standard depth start to finish.

Unlike the 25m pool it’s a tiled pool which for some reason I tend to prefer. The fact that it is a wide pool helps in spreading the crowd of swimmers around – I’ve found 25m pools can look crowded a lot more quickly than the 50m pool does and that beyond there being more than double the number of swimmers in a 50m pool. Does not make sense to me mathematically but finding gaps to swim through was far easier.

Anyway.

Facilities wise, the dressing rooms are fine; there are plenty of showers. The lockers lock with your card or bracelet and unlike most of the other pools I’ve been to in Luxembourg, they tend to be short and comparatively wide rather than tall and narrow.

You can swim until 9.30 most days and it is open 7 days a week unlike most of the other pools in the area. It opens at 8am 4 mornings a week and I think, at around 9 on weekend mornings.

Transport wise, it has a car park but it is also served by a bunch of buses, definitely 1, 16 and from town by a few of the RGTR buses as well. 8 goes nearby as well.

Truth be told, I was not that lost on Les Thermes which I finally got to visit yesterday. I can see why families might like it but for me, it didn’t do it. With Coque due to re-open on Monday, I cannot see myself going to the trouble of going to Les Thermes unless absolutely every single swimming pool in the area is closed.

On paper, it looks like it should be brilliant. It has a lot of pools – a wave pool, an outdoor pool, a pool with some bubbles, a paddling pool, a short pool which looks around 15m or so, and a 25m pool The 15m pool has an adjustable depth. The 25m pool ranges in depth from 1.8m to 4m. There are 2 diving boards at the 4m end, a 1m board and a 3m board. There is also a water slide that obviously has a landing pool although I didn’t check that out. I didn’t examine the paddling pool in any great deal. All of the other pools appear to be stainless steel. This ties in with the vaguely futuristic style of the building which looks a little like what people in the 60s imagined what the future would look like, vaguely circular and UFOish. The interior has a bunch of red faux leather panels and the windows of zones looking over the pool from on high are weird shapes.

So, to the good points. The wave pool is terrific, it generates really nice breaking waves and they aren’t exactly weak either. I’m not going to say you could go surfing in there but if the pool was a little bigger…bodysurfing wouldn’t be impossible, apart from washing up on stainless steel rather than sand.

The bubbles/jacuzziesqe relaxation pool behind the wave pool is very sweet and the bubbles are likewise, not exactly weak.

The outdoor pool was a bit smaller than I expected, but again, it was quiet enough, the water was plenty warm enough even though the air temperature wasn’t all that high.

For me, the primary issue was with the actual swimming pools as opposed to what you might call the leisure pools. Being somewhat of a wuss, I’m surprised I’m even making this comment, but I found the water too warm. The 25m pool was also, well, difficult to swim in. The diving boards were closed off to swim in and the rest of the pool was populated by people swimming very slowly. And I was much slower than usual in the rather too warm water. I can live without the leisure fun stuff but I’d like a sports pool to be reasonably easy to swim in.

Even the shorter pool – which was beautifully empty – was just too hard to move around in because it was too warm.

Dressing room wise, differently to other pools in Luxembourg, it has gender separated dressing rooms and they are communal with one private dressing room in the set I used. Showers have 2 private showers in the women’s shower sections. Lockers wise, they work with the entry bracelet (I really like that technology) and the lockers are a little wider than is my experience in other pools. Les Thermes also has much wider opening hours to the municipal pools which would possibly make it attractive if you had a car.  But I don’t, so a feature of any pool review for me is always going to be “and how much hassle is it to get to”.

For this reason, Les Thermes has wound up not on top of my list of pools here. Currently, I’d rate the pool in Syrdall to be a better pool – its swimming pool is noticeably cooler than the leisure pools and it’s somewhat easier to get to (one bus as opposed to 2 or 3, against that, a little further away). For actual swim training, I’m not commenting on Coque until I’ve been back in there next week but Bonnevoie is probably a better pool. If you’ve kids though, it’ll be a toss up between Les Thermes and Syrdall and if the wave pool matters, then it would be Les Thermes.

One of the swimming pools filed under “closed” for quite a bit of the summer was the city centre Badanstalt. It re-opened on 1 August apparently and I dropped in to have a look today. It’s ten minutes from where I live and the paperwork says it’s 25 m but reviews suggest not great for swim training.

The Badanstalt is a beautiful classical building ended by a lovely windowed hemisphere. From the outside it is gorgeous. Inside is a pool which yes, is about 25m long. It has 2 whirlpools, a couple of bubble beds and some water jets. I don’t know exactly all the facilities it has because I did not really have time to test them all.

What I do know, however, is that the Badanstalt really isn’t a swimming pool you can do much swim training in. It just doesn’t have a clearly defined lap you can follow – I swam some lengths but I can’t really say for certain whether they were 20 or 25 metres and anyway, it seems to me there is some sort of a current in the pool. I could do the lengths in 36s on one direction (suggests 25m) and 23 s in the other decision (suggests about 20 m). As my personal best for 25m at the moment is a paltry 33s, I’m doubting that I could do it in 23 unless a) it isn’t 25m and b) there was some support in the water as it were.

So I’m not really going to review this as a swimming pool – but I will say this – it would be a great place to go after you’ve been training. The water is a degree or two warmer than Bonnevoie but cooler than the leisure pools in Syrdall. The jacuzzis are very comfortable, and I liked the bubble beds as well. There are vertical jets at one end of the pool which may be eternal swimming pools except I was too strong a swimmer for that to work for me.

It is in a beautiful building, with a high ceiling and room to sit around the edges.  It is the kind of place I would love to go on a Sunday evening for an hour or two before the week starts again. I used to do this in Dublin – go to the water relaxation centre in ALSAA for a while to cap off the weekend and it’s a nice idea. The main problem with doing it in the Badanstalt is that it closes at 12. And they throw you out of the pool at 11.30. So I think it might work as a post work relation place – the pool is usually open till about during the week except Monday’s when the place is closed.

I’d be happy enough to go there again but more in line with going there after I went running (or something) rather than to go swimming. Full marks for relaxation, less so for pounding out the lengths.

One of the more useful things about swim.com when I signed up for it is that it highlighted all those places where people swam around me and one of the ones it highlighted was Syrdall Schwemm which did not look like it was all that far away. So I resolved to give it a go and that go was today. It is in Senningen, about 12km from Luxembourg Ville.

Syrdall is more a water complex than just a swimming pool. It has a 25m pool, a relaxation pool, a paddling pool and an outdoor pool. The outdoor and relaxation pools are heated to 32 degrees; the 25m sports pool I thought was heated to 28 degrees but it felt colder than that today.  In addition it has a landing pool for what looks like a decent enough slide. I didn’t test that.

By public transport, you can get to it using the 125, 128 and 140 buses. I think there are a couple more but those are by some distance and counting the most regular, the 125 in particular. I think it is outside the Luxembourg Ville area though, so this means that if you use a CityKaart bus ticket, you’re not covered for it (it is for occasions like this that I have an MKarte as well).

Entrance wise, it charges according to time. I paid for 4 hours access which was more than enough. This puts it into the zone of “pricier than usual”, on the other hand, up front, I’m going to say this is the nicest of the three pool complexes I have been in in Luxembourg and if getting home from it after about 7pm wasn’t such a hassle, I’d probably make the financial sacrifices to swim there more regularly.  Unfortunately there are practical reasons why this isn’t going to work for me at the moment.

The pool building is pretty much glass on 2 sides which makes it a very bright place during the day (I tend to like this which is why I didn’t really like the Ben Dunne pool in Santry and loved DCU pool). The sports pool was relatively quiet which made it a joy to swim in.

The 25m pool is 1.35-2m deep which makes it quite a lot shallower than the pool in Bonnevoie, but slightly deeper than the public 25m pool in dCoque. It is split in two sections, one of which I assume is for the strong swimmers, but to be fair, anyone in the other section was generally swimming lengths. It wasn’t busy either which made a nice change from Bonnevoie which occasionally feels like it needs traffic lights. For a lot of the time I was in it, I had it more or less to myself, with that beautiful feeling of seeing flat calm water before me, a joy to most swimmers.  I thoroughly enjoyed that swim and that on its own makes the pool a good one in my book.

It is possible that the sports pool is quiet purely because the other two pools exist; both warm, both with whirlpool beds. They are both relatively big as well  – not as big as the sports pool but big enough to be take all the people in them. The outdoor pool looks up on to a sweeping hill with a forest. Occasionally, planes taking off from Findel fly over or near by. It was sunny today when I checked it out. I found it idyllic. It also is not very heavily chlorinated for a warm warm pool.

In practical terms, the complex also has a sauna section – I haven’t tried this.

The dressing room are basically a corridor of changing cubicles. They are not divided by sex – the split happens for the shower and toilets. As seems to be common (so far) in Luxembourg pools the lockers are tall narrow boxes and they are unlocked and locked using the smart bracelet you get on entry which I think is fairly practical.

There are analogue clocks littered around the place so you generally know or can find out what time it is. There is also a poolside cafe which is a nice touch imo – not sure how often it is open but it was open today. Showers wise, there are only 8 showers in the womens section. There also is little to no drying off space in the showers area and the entry and exit can get a bit clogged particularly if small children are involved.

There is plenty of space to sit around the pool – quite a few loungers and some benches, both outdoors and indoors. There is a play area as well.

All in all, I liked this pool and my main regret is that it is hard to get home from in the evenings after around 7 – the bus frequency drops right off. Otherwise it would be my number 1 pool, at least while dCoque is closed.

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