As a long-haul airline pilot who loves both swimming and flying, I’ve spent more than two decades crisscrossing blue skies and memorable pools in cities around the world. Yet I still can’t imagine a more delightful city for swimmers than my home port of London. As this year’s blazing summer at last gives way to autumn, here are six places to take an all-weather plunge into the capital.
London Aquatics Center
Swimming — energizing but also meditative — is my preferred treatment for jet lag. It is also an opportunity to immerse yourself in an ordinary hour of a city’s life, and occasionally in bygone Olympic glory. I love the 50-meter pools of former host cities like Montreal, but my favorite is in the London Aquatics Center in Stratford, built for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Before your swim (from around 8 pounds, or about $11), climb into the spectator seating to take the measure of the architect Zaha Hadid’s serene structure, suggestive of both waves and wings. Note, too, the computerized drowning detection system on the lifeguards’ chairside screens. The three pools in this cathedral of swimming hold around 10 million liters, or about 2.6 million gallons, of water — roughly one liter for every Londoner.
Tooting Bec Lido
In Britain, lido — from an Italian word for shore or beach — commonly rhymes with the dog’s name Fido and refers to a public outdoor swimming spot. Lidos may be unheated, yet many are open year-round; take precautions if you’re unaccustomed to cold water.
A South London friend recently steered me to Tooting Bec Lido (£10; from October through the spring, join the South London Swimming Club for unlimited access) in Wandsworth. Funded as a jobs-creation program and opened in 1906, this is Britain’s largest outdoor freshwater pool.
During my first few 100-yard laps here, I longed for the sugar rush of a wall push-off. Soon, however, I relaxed into each traverse and found myself surprised — and a touch disappointed — whenever a turn drew near.
After a bracing 30-minute swim in the 66-degree Fahrenheit water (check the temperature here), I climbed the seating to the west of the pool and watched a train bound for Victoria Station whip past beyond the lido’s fence. Then I lay down on a sun-warmed step beneath a memorial to Cyril and Yvonne, two keen swimmers who were born in the early 1920s, met here as teenagers and married in 1948.
Parliament Hill Lido
Early on summer mornings, I often run from my flat to Highgate Men’s Pond, one of three popular swimming ponds on Hampstead Heath. Until recently, I’d never jogged on to the nearby Parliament Hill Lido (from £5).
This pool opened in 1938, part of a network that aimed to draw “children from the dangers of the streets,” according to a London Times article. One 1940s user recalled how Londoners queued to swim as the din of an air raid echoed around them.
Alastair Campbell, the co-host of “The Rest Is Politics,” a British podcast, swims here. Recently, I wrote to ask if I might join him.
We arrived at 7 a.m., and Mr. Campbell greeted his neighbors by name. Then I followed him into the 63-degree water of the 200-foot pool. We paddled in counterclockwise loops around the chatty “cocktail lane” nearest the changing rooms.
Mr. Campbell spoke about his lifelong struggle with depression and how much cold-water swimming helps, even in winter, when the lido’s surface might sparkle with ice crystals. During his first autumn here, he mentioned the ever-cooler water to another swimmer, who reassured him: “If you can do 12,” — that’s 12 degrees Celsius, or 54 degrees Fahrenheit — “you can do 11. If you can do 11, you can do 10…”
Sea Lanes Canary Wharf
The British artist Tracey Emin once envisioned a series of pools along the Thames so prominent that pilots would point them out to passengers as their jets banked over the metropolis. No doubt she’d approve of Sea Lanes Canary Wharf, an Olympic-length, skyscraper-embowered pool (£10) in the business district that has arisen from London’s once-derelict docklands.
This unheated, year-round pool, which opened in June, floats in a dock that’s adjacent to the Thames. I’d never swum in a floating pool, and on opening day I arrived at 6:45 a.m., along with my equally excited friend Karen, a keen open-water swimmer.
No fan of wet suits — “they make me bob around like a cork” — Karen opted for a triathlon suit, and I donned my usual trunks. (Foil blankets are available for the hypothermic, while the merely chilly can choose between two poolside saunas.) We promised ourselves sauna time and après-swim croissants, and then — gasp! — lowered ourselves into the 60-degree water.
Our short swim was an immersion in contradictions: the gentle air of the warm June morning and the water’s cold wallop; the organic, green-brown view through my goggles into this state-of-the-art pool; the affability of fellow swimmers and the blank facades of the corporate towers around us.
London Fields Lido
London Fields Lido in Hackney (around £7) was built in 1932 and closed in 1988; years of local campaigning led to its reopening in 2006.
With its heated water and gently inclined, handrail-equipped entry ramp, this lido is more accessible than most. And every swimmer might improve here, thanks to the inexpensive lessons offered by the lido’s Swim Doctors.
My coach for my first lesson in 40 years was Henry Fincher, a childhood prodigy whose fearsome practice schedule led to burnout at age 13. Today, he coaches adults, from amateurs like me to those preparing to cross the English Channel.
After observing a few laps, Mr. Fincher explained that there was more to the front crawl than windmilling arms and fluttering legs. He advised me to think of the strokes and glides of a skater, and recommended his “catch-up drill,” in which I held a small bar ahead of me with one hand, then briefly with both, to enforce a brief pause between strokes. He also had views on how I turned to breathe. “Your head weighs five kilograms,” or around 11 pounds, he informed me, to my surprise. “Keep it mostly underwater.”
Beckenham Place Park
In 2019, thanks in part to a grant from Britain’s national lottery, a purpose-built swimming lake (around £8) opened in Beckenham Place Park, a Georgian-era green oasis in southeast London once frequented by a young David Bowie.
Two friends from nearby Catford introduced me to this park years ago and recently connected me with Jo Swinson, a swimmer here who was once the Baby of the House — that is, the youngest member of the House of Commons.
Ms. Swinson showed me how to attach a mandatory tow float to my waist and led me to the bank. I stepped into the 63-degree water and followed her in gentle clockwise arcs that rippled through reflections of green boughs and cumulus.
While Ms. Swinson pointed out damselflies and marveled at the little grebes that paddled past, I found myself flying miles away and decades back to my childhood living room, where my mother read to me riverside scenes from Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows.”
Later, Ms. Swinson described the “otherworldly” sound of “ice creaking and screeching” in winter and how she counts the goslings each spring. Above all, she appreciates the ease with which strangers strike up conversations and the elemental experience of lowering yourself into this new London lake. “It’s a body of water, and you’re a body mainly composed of water,” she told me. “You’re in it, and you’re a part of it.”
Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2026.
The post Diving Into London: 6 Places to Swim, No Matter What the Season appeared first on New York Times.
