Anonymous
As hotel pools go, this one is passable. It’s well maintained and clean, the water is well filtered, and it has generously sized gender-specific locker rooms (either take a padlock with you or – if a hotel guest – leave your valuables in the safe in your room). Swimming caps are compulsory (now very much the rule in Irish pools generally); towels are issued at pool reception. At the time of my visits, two lanes were segregated for lap swimming. Pool rules forbade non-swimmers and those not swimming laps from using those lanes: the outcome was that I generally had a lane to myself. The drawbacks are: the pool’s odd size (a 1,000 metre swim requires 50 lengths); the absence of striped lanes; the doubtless attractive but functionally useless wavy blue designs on the pool bottom; and the scarcity of floats on the lane ropes. For me, the latter three of these drawbacks when taken together made for a rather disorienting experience: I collided with lane ropes at least once in every lap.