32 Endell Street
London, WC2H 9AG
Nearest Transport: Covent Garden
020 7831 1804
Oasis Sports Centre offers a wide range of sports and leisure facilities including swimming pools, saunas, sunbeds and personal trainers. They also provide 12 week courses.
The only public HEATED outdoor pool that I know in London. (If you know of another one, please share.)
Oasis is actually one of the main Camden sports centres. If you're a resident or work in Camden, it's cheaper. It has a gym and exercise classes (all the usual things) but I can't recommend those bits as I only go for the pool. There's two pools, side by side. One indoors and one outdoors and it's the outdoors one that's the real oasis.
It's lovely during the winter when it's icelandically steamy. Remember to take flip flops or you'll have frost bitten toes before you get in. Summer is beautiful too - I think it's the afternoon when it gets the sun. Dive down and swim up through a fizz of bubbles... There's space to sunbathe or picnic on a boat-like upper deck which overlooks the water. The little cafe is indoors and also overlooks the swimming antics going on outside. You can get a cheese and tomato toasty or something.
Practical info: one end of the pool is very deep so you could dive if you wanted. Length around 25m. Fast lane, medium and slow. There are lots of kids in the summer holidays. The changing rooms are a bit grim (freezing in winter) and you need the right change for the lockers. Ask directions from the changing rooms to the pool - it's a maze of corridors. Cost is average price for a swim in London.
Found this excellent link with a virtual tour of the centre (although strangely, it doesn't show the swimming pool very much!).