Beauty Brighton & Lovely Lewes (#827 - #829)
12 September 2026
I have had the good fortune of sharing a number of my pool tourist explorations with all of my daughters, my siblings, father and, on one occasion, a swimmer niece. But I have had more of these shared experiences with Maia, my oldest daughter, than anyone else. She’s always game for a trip and a swim, still taking that advice that her maternal grandfather gave her before she went off to university in Vancouver, “Say yes to everything!”
Maybe not the safest advice to give an 18 year old … but it’s served her well to a life well- lived and a world well-explored.
And it served me well today for my triple-shot pool-swim-about.
I had mentioned to her awhile back that I had this Saturday free and wondered if she wanted to swim around different pools in/near Brighton. Naturally, she said yes!
I had the Saltdean Lido in mind as the anchor pool, but she found out that this weekend kicks off their “Dogtember” weekends where the pool is given over to the canines. A worthy cause, but that kiboshed plans to swim there.
So, Maia got to planning and laid out a three pool journey:
I grabbed a train down and met up with her at the Falmer station right on the edge of the University of Brighton campus and we started our swimming day around 11:30am in this 5-lane, 25-meter, 1.2M constant depth pool. We had the one fast lane to ourselves so we could do a version of my standard warmup sets:
400 IM kick-drill
4 x 100 on 1:40 descend
16 x 25 on 0:35, I alternated dolphin kicks and “build a perfect stroke 25 fly” while Maia did IM
50 cool down
Scenes from pool #827 - University of Brighton
This pool is barely a year old, having opened in June 2025, so it is nice and fresh. It was uncrowded which is always a plus, but the lanes were narrow. And they had a bit of a faff of an entry system that required community members to prebook the swim through the app, then register an account on-site, get a card for that account which we then immediately swapped for a wrist band with a chip in it, which was necessary to unlock the door onto the pool deck. It seems a bit over engineered.
From UoB, we jumped into Maia’s trusty “Foxy” CRV and she drove us over to the excellent Lewes Leisure Centre. What was excellent about this?
One would think it would be the two dedicated lap lanes which were empty, wider and deeper on average (1.8M sloping up to 0.8M at the shallow end). They were great and we did a smidge of a “real set” as the core 1,000 of our 1,250 meter swim: 2 rounds of 3 x 50 on 0:50, 2 x 100 on 1:35, 1 x 150 on 2:00.
But the swim wasn't the highlight. The highlight was the super tall, super long and super fast flume/slide that was open. Though the little kids waiting in line with us looked a bit askance at us oldsters, we both enjoyed riding it before and after our swim.
Scenes from pool #828 - Lewes Leisure Centre
We finished up there by about 1:15 and then made our way on foot through the quaint, very well-kept and well-preserved town of Lewes, stopping for a sausage roll and latte/flat white snack at Carafe, a very good coffee shop that just happened to on our route to the third pool of the day, Pells Pool.
I don’t think I quite realized until this morning that Pells Pool was unheated, but the sun was out in (almost) full force by the time we jumped into the 18C, spring-fed, 50-YARD long historic pool. As I am racing tomorrow, my aim for today was a total of 3,500 meters across the three pools, so I swam a straight 1,100 yards, just barely over my self-imposed requirement of 1,001 meters to add this to my list.
Pells Pool is a brilliant community space, made all the more festive and energetic today as they were hosting a fundraising swim in most of the pool, the Pells Pool Channel Challenge, where teams were each swimming over the course of the day to go the distance of the English Channel - 33km. We swam in the remaining open couple of lanes along with a couple of other swimmers. The water was brisk, but not as bad** as I had anticipated. We didn’t buy a sauna pass for a post-swim warmup, but the on-deck showers were warm enough to take the chill off.
Satisfied with our aquatic adventure, we decamped pool lands, strolled and meandered through the town to meet up with Maia's boyfriend*** to finish the day with a great Thai meal (Pestle & Mortar for anyone taking a trip here) in their quiet walled garden area.
I challenge anyone to map out a more perfect day for a father and a swimming pool tourist!
THANKS MAIA!
**cold-water wimp that I am
*** I hope that's the right term these days!
