Thirsk and Sowerby Leisure and Wellbeing Hub

The town pool sits on Chapel Street, about 300 metres from our door, and it was rebuilt from the roof down in 2021. The council spent close to 4 million on it: a new roof that fixed years of condensation, a complete replacement of the plant that had been shutting the pools without warning, a gym extended to 300 square metres and 60 stations, a studio and a cycling studio. It closed in February 2021 and reopened that October. Jasmine Harrison, the Atlantic rower from Sowerby who worked at the centre, opened it officially in December.

There is a 25 metre main pool and a separate teaching pool kept several degrees warmer, which is the part that matters with small children. An adult swim is 6, a child 4.5, and under-4s are 1.1. On Friday afternoons in term time there is a Discount Dip at 1.75, and when everything else went up by between 11 and 29 per cent in April 2026, that one did not move.

Locals call it the baths, and there is a reason the name has outlived the building. The ground is held in trust for the people of Thirsk and Sowerby by a charity registered in 1989 that still exists, and the refurbishment needed its permission before it could go ahead.

Leave the Market Place at the south end and head down towards Chapel Street. It is about 300 metres and four or five minutes on the flat.

Park at the centre rather than in town. There are 60 free spaces, but with a three hour maximum between 7am and 10pm on weekdays and 8am to 2pm at weekends, then a two hour gap before you can return. Take a free ticket from the machine and put it on the dashboard. Blue badge holders have no time limit at any time. Three hours free is enough for a swim and lunch afterwards, which is the obvious way to use it.

Be careful with automatic directions to this one. The public routing engines make a mess of the walk between the square and Chapel Street, and one of them returns a thirty kilometre loop through the countryside. It is a five minute walk.

Swim, and look at the timetable before you come rather than after. There are no fixed pool hours here. School swimming takes most of the weekday mornings in term time, lessons take the late afternoons, and the swimming club has the main pool most weekday evenings. What is left for the public concentrates into early mornings, the middle of the day, and a late lane swim.

In the school holidays it opens right up, with general swim through the morning and afternoon in both pools, plus an inflatable session with a slide on Tuesdays, Fun and Float on Fridays and Family Fun on Saturday lunchtimes.

Beyond the water there is a sauna for over-16s, a 300 square metre gym, classes, and a full-size floodlit 3G pitch with changing rooms.

The teaching pool, if you have small children. It is 30 to 32 degrees against 28 to 30 in the main pool, and it runs its own programme, so a family session works even when one child swims and the other is still in armbands.

The Discount Dip. One pound seventy five, Friday 2.30 to 3.30 in term time, no booking. It is the cheapest swim in the district by a distance.

The lessons are better value than they look. Thirty one pounds a month covers a weekly half-hour lesson and includes unlimited public swimming at four pools, so a family who swim most weeks are better off on lessons than paying at the door.

And the plant. Not exciting, but the reason the pool is reliably open now is that the 2021 rebuild replaced the equipment that used to close it at no notice.

Check the live timetable before you set out, and check it again if you are reading this in autumn 2026. Session names changed on 24 August and a new swimming programme starts in September, so any printed grid is out of date. The live feed is linked above and is the only thing worth trusting.

There is no cafe, only vending machines. Bring a snack for the walk out or come to us afterwards.

Take a pound for the locker, and your own towel. Reception sells swimwear, goggles and swim nappies if you have forgotten something.

One adult can take two children under 8 into the water and no more, so a parent alone with three is stuck. Worth knowing before you arrive with all of them in the car.

If you need a Changing Places toilet, ring 01845 522447 first. A tourist listing says there is one and the council's own facilities list does not mention it, and we would rather you asked than found out at the door. The same number will confirm whether the sauna costs extra on top of a swim, which nobody publishes.

Ignore anything you find online from Zest Leisure. That was the old brand, the website is dead, and search engines still surface an old notice about the main pool being closed for a plant room failure. That was the problem the 2021 rebuild fixed.