Gilded in Guildford - Pool #822
6 September 2026
After a Saturday night swim (#821) at the University of Surrey, I started off my Sunday morning with what would become a three-pool day and a four-pool weekend at the iconic Guildford Lido (#822) ...
This nearly 100 year-old facility lived up to all the love and hype I've seen online. It routinely appears on online lists of the best lidos (such as this one from Time Out), but I have also had many of my fellow pool tourists tout this pool on Instagram in their posts or in DMs to me.
It is both a beautiful swimmers' pool - heated year round, with proper lane ropes, pace clock and decent depth for training ...
... but it also has extensive grounds for relaxing and water slides for playing (I didn't get a good picture of those) befitting the Mayor's hope when this was inaugurated in 1933 that there would be, "many years of joy which the men and maidens of this town will find in this pleasure ground."
This video is a good historical watch for a lot of reasons:
I love the size of the crowd, the clear enthusiasm the town had
The sense of humour from the gentle ribbing of the Mayor from a fellow dignitary
The Mayor displayed quite a good dive that would still position him well for a Masters meet today
... and I saw a few good strokes from the patrons
I managed to get in a decent enough 1,500 meters, done as a first warmup before heading up to Bracknell to race a bit later in the morning. My only disappointment in the morning was the slight disconnect between their online entry ticket platform, which allowed me to purchase a ticket for a supposed 7:30am entry time ...
... and the fact that the lifeguards were not prepared to open before 8am. They were polite and it wasn't their fault; apparently the opening time changed to 8am as of September 1st, but that somehow didn't make it to their online portal.
Were I living closer to this pool, I'd be here A LOT. I'd rate it as the best swimmers lido I have come across in England, even better than the pretty darn nice London Fields Lido (#702 on my #1001Pools list).
