Lucky #777 - Archway Leisure Centre (London)

20 January 2026

I'm not into numerology, so I wouldn't call this angelic, but, if I had young kids** and lived in Camden, I'd bring them here:

With a gently sloping beach entry and very fun-looking water slide (closed during Fitness Swimming time), this is probably a great place for families. It's not the place for serious swim workouts, though it was better than I anticipated given some of the online comments I had seen.

There were three lanes with proper lane ropes as you can see. No backstroke flags and no lane lines, but they had a side-mounted pace clock that was working and the distance is a proper 25-meters.

After a frenetic and insane amount of racing in 2025, I'm in a lazy-return-to-swim-training phase, this being only my third swim of 2026, so I didn't need an elite caliber pool. This pool is actually quite convenient for me, a two minute walk from the Archway tube station, but I'd avoided previously when I was desperately seeking serious swims. I happened to be relatively nearby for a doctor's appointment and enjoyed a stroll through Hampstead Heath before my lethargic 1,250-meters (doctor's orders!).

And, for those of my 6.4 daily average viewers who view this on a laptop or desktop where the videos seem to work (I haven't figured out why it doesn't work on mobile), here's the pan-view-video from the viewing gallery. I got a lifeguard whistling at me to stop right after I captured this ;)

** Though, if the slides were open, I'm sure my trio of twenty- and now one thirty-something daughters would have a lot of fun even now!