Goslings Swimmers

March 2013  update

Individual swim sessions will cost £4.50 ( up from £4.00 ) for GOC members, non-member guests still £6.00, from the beginning of April 2013. The annual season ticket, to swim free every Thursday evening for a year, will go up to £85.

The London gay swimming group Goslings, which has  been operating a weekly swim at the Oasis heated outdoor pool, Covent Garden, for over 30 years,  has been fully integrated as a Specialist Group within GOC since April  2012. (In fact, this is a homecoming to GOC as Goslings originally grew out of GOC back in the 1980s.)

Details of our weekly swim are on our events page, and are listed in the Regular Events page in OUTdoors. The first quarter of 2013 has been rather cold, but as the days lengthen, and Spring arrives, why not dig out your cozzie and join us one Thursday evening ? For the GOC members' rate, remember to bring your GOC membership certificate. Many of the Goslings also adjourn to the pub after the weekly swim.

To see how nice the Oasis pool is ( and pending any summer photos taken by the Goslings ) - go to the  website of the Oasis centre, and use the virtual tour ( select outdoor pool ). http://www.better.org.uk/leisure/oasis-sports-centre/tour

Answers below to some other questions we're often asked :

We are non-competitive, and all levels of swimming ability are welcome, but Goslings does not provide swimming tuition.

The regular Goslings are (like GOC as a whole) predominantly gay male but women are equally welcome. Goslings have private hire of the pool for our session. Non-members of GOC can swim with us occasionally but must pay a higher rate, and after three swims should join GOC. We quite often have straight visitors who didn't realise that the pool  closes to the public early that evening - we're happy to let them swim (at the higher rate) if they're relaxed about a gay swimming club.We often have two or three such visitors.

The pool has fast, medium and slow lanes - take your pick. In each lane people are swimming up and down, and there's often a  chatty gathering at the shallow end ( where the warmer water comes in ). But the session is really for lane swimming, so unless there are very few people it's not practical just to splash around.

We do operate through almost all the year, though numbers dip in winter (and we close for a few weeks over Xmas and New Year) and rise in summer. The pool really is outdoors, but is reasonably heated.