Community dives in to keep south Bristol swimming pool afloat with 24-hour swimathon

Swimmers of all ages have taken part in a 24-hour sponsored relay to keep a south Bristol pool afloat this winter.

From children to grandparents, hundreds of locals joined the Jubilee-athon at the Jubilee Pool in Knowle.

After years of campaigning, Jubilee Pool was saved by the local community last year. The 22-metre pool is Bristol’s first community-run leisure facility and now has a 15 station fitness gym, as well as swimming lessons and aqua aerobics.

Opened in 1937, the 86-year-old pool still has the original blue Art Deco gates and it was taken over by The Friends of Jubilee Pool, a charity set up when the pool transitioned to community ownership. They now have a 35-year lease on the building.

But the hike in energy bills has meant the supporters have had to fundraise the shortfall until bills hopefully come down in the spring.

A similar 24-hour sponsored swim last year raised £30,000, with swimmers achieving an impressive 14,216 lengths between them.

This year, the aim was to swim continuously from midday on Saturday through to midday on Sunday, with at least one swimmer in the water at all times throughout the 24-hours.

Jules Laming of The Friends of Jubilee Pool had booked her own swim for 1am in the middle of her 10pm-4am shift overseeing the event through to the early hours of Sunday morning.

Jules said: “It is really tough at the moment and the funds we raise from this weekend will contribute to our winter energy appeal.

“When we took the pool on at the end of September last year, we immediately launched our winter energy appeal because we needed to cover the cost of the utility bills. They have gone up hugely.

“We need to raise £30,000 and we’re nearly there, we’ve raised £20,000 so hopefully this event will give us a big boost and get us through to April which gets us through the worst part of the year in terms of energy usage. Hopefully the energy markets will have settled a bit and the prices will come down as we enter our warmer months when we use less energy.”

Like all leisure facilities, Jubilee Pool’s costs have risen since the autumn, from the price of chemicals for the pool to staff.

Jules said: “We’ve done a huge amount since we took it on. The roof has been fixed, we’ve started to refurbish the gym which has lots of new equipment and we are starting to refurbish the building bit by bit.

“But this is the little stuff - with the big stuff like the boilers and the air handling units, we’re looking at around £2m of work long-term but the priority is getting through the energy issue and to cover our costs.”

Jules says she hopes help for the major work will come via grants and fund applications, nationally and locally. In the meantime, it’s all about getting people to join the pool as members so there is a consistent revenue stream.

“We get so much support from these individual events but we need more people to take up membership - at the moment we are running an offer where if you join this weekend you get February for free and won’t start paying until March.

“We have around 450 members already but we need to significantly increase that because the more people we have using the pool, the more stable our income becomes and the more secure the pool becomes in terms of its financial sustainability.

“We just want people to use it and love it - and we still have slots left for the swimathon this weekend for anybody who wants to join us.

“We have significant physical and mental health issues in south Bristol and a swimming pool is a fundamental part of addressing those and also getting kids and adults swimming.

“If people don’t use it, we’ll lose it and when something like this is gone, you’ll never get it back.”

Member Steve Jones, 65, from Brislington, learnt to swim at the pool as a child in the 1960s. He had been sponsored about £150 to swim for an hour this weekend and he was up for the challenge.

Diagnosed with prostate cancer last year, he says having a local pool has helped him get through the past few months.

“A lot of it is about mental health. I used to train at a different gym but I closed my membership there so I could become a full member here.

“My dad used to swim here, I taught my children to swim here and now I bring my grandchildren here, it means so much to this community. It’s unbelievable what the people behind the campaign have done.”

Fellow member Jerry Hatcher, 66, has been swimming at Jubilee Pool for 60 years and now swims there every day.

He said: “This pool means an awful lot to me. I learnt to swim here and I taught my children and grandchildren to swim here.

“Seven years ago I went down with cancer but I used swimming as rehabilitation. I’m all clear at the moment, touch wood, and it has helped my mental health massively.

“When you’ve been diagnosed with an illness like cancer, for those two hours every morning I’m in the pool, I put it all to the back of my mind and didn’t think about it. You can’t put a price on that.

“It would have been a travesty if this pool had closed. People say it’s an old building but we are surrounded by houses much older which people buy for £500,000 so why would anybody say this pool had run its course? We need people to use the pool as much as possible.”

Jerry had been sponsored to swim for an hour on Saturday and was hoping to beat his personal score of last year.

“I swam 106 lengths in 54 minutes last year so I’m looking for 120 this year. Mind you, I had just had a Chinese takeaway and red wine last year so I’m not doing that this year, I’m more focussed!”

There are still spaces for people to take part in the Jubilee-athon today (Saturday) and until 12noon tomorrow (Sunday, January 29). To book a slot, click here.