Goldenstones Leisure Centre

Apr 22nd, 2023

Not been spinning for almost two months. Tried out the new cycling kit tonight and enjoyed the workout.
Mar 10th, 2023

The staff at Goldenstones have been so lovely and supportive!! Was chuffed they had a body scanner included in my membership to monitor health goals at the gym. Then the staff helped me make the most of everything by helping me start a personal programme to build my confidence in using the gym and facilities. I went to my first goldenstones group class last week, but have been to only group classes in the past as I wasnt sure how to use the gym floor. I feel the group classes led by Ant and led by Steph were the most fun. Looking forward to my second classes with them soon!
Mar 6th, 2023

Golden stones is the only large pool with a swim school in the area, however the needs of those accessing the pool are not throughly considered, rather deemed secondary to the gym users. With a town heavily saturated with gyms, chains and independent, golden stones should focus on their strength as the only pool in the area. The swim school has rapidly defined over the past 6 months, you can no longer sit and watch your child swim you must stand in the changing room which causes crowding. If you have multiple children attending lessons consecutively they also must stand. Now in their great wisdom Freedom Leisure have imposed a ban on buggies in the changing area, this is a thoughtless choice that will bear a significant financial impact, they will loose swim school participants as parents will no longer be able to access the changing area with small children. For a leisure centre who stated they could not afford to shut the swim school during the renovations, ran a swim school with barely functioning changing rooms ironically continues to demonstrate that it does not care for the patrons who access the pool.
Apr 15th, 2023

Never ever ever answer phone so you cant find out anything you need to know about the pool or gym or sign up. In fact, if you keep calling they get irritated & staff cut off their phone. If you send a membership enquiry via their website, they leave you a voicemail to call them but still dont pickup phone. I tried for weeks before managing to sign up. Theyre going to be losing a lot of custom. A few more observations: - swimming pool timetable is completely random so you have to plan in advance when to go. - gym has no lockers so you have to go into the wet swimming area - sauna has random opening times so often you cant use it after swimming - they cant be bothered to fix the steam room so just use it as a staff storage area - unlike in other pools, management dont keep even a single lane for lengths during open swim sessions, so people struggle to swim around the hoards of uncontrolled screaming kids - parking is 1.05 per hour including SMS message & booking fee- on top of membership. - gym free weight area has enough space for 2 people. Machines cant replace free weights. - automatic door broken & not fixed in ages - you have to touch the dirty door handle to get inside - instead of their maintenance team working when the club is closed, they wait until customers are walking past them to then use 95dB loud drills in the hallway without warning, making the environment stressful for customers. - instead of keeping at least one lane open for public fitness at all times, their swimming pool timetable usually denotes private sessions for schools, private clubs or open swim (mass mayhem with kids & no space to do laps). These sessions take up the entire pool. As a result, instead of them making it easy to stay fit, you have to plan your life around the management here. - When you do find a lane swimming slot that coincides with your availability, they usually put open swimming directly before it, thus causing the changing rooms to become full of screaming kids for the first half hour. If you wait for the hoards to leave so that you can get changed, youll only have around 20 minutes of swimming before the next session on their timetable. As a member, you struggle with their timetable on a daily basis & end up only being able to swim once a month. All these problems are unnecessary & could be easily fixed by leaving a couple of lanes open for public fitness at all times- its a big enough pool. Public swimming pools have a duty of care to enable the public to easily stay fit. This management fails in every regard. Life is complex- why not do what most leisure centres do & leave a couple of lanes for paying members to swim at any time? You can still have parties & private bookings in the rest of the pool- its a big pool. Ridiculous & unreasonable management..
Mar 4th, 2023