Leisure and Health

Health Clubs

Health clubs in the full as-seen-on-TV sense have become quite common in the past 5 years. A look at the Dublin yellow pages turnes up page after page of ads for places with all the facilities you'd expect. I'd say there are over 100 clubs listed in the Dublin phone book. In the Galway yellow pages there are 4 listed for Galway city. Cork has some too, but outside those cities you mostly have to look for leisure centres to provide such facilities.

There are plenty of health clubs that just offer aerobics and aromatherapy and sunbeds and the like. The bigger ones offer these and more sports oriented facilities like squash courts, indoor circuits and gyms. Which one should you use? Why, the one you'll use, of course. That tends to mean some place near work or home. So, once you're settled in, talk to your neighbours and look in the yellow pages under health clubs to find one near you. For now, you just need to know they exist and below is a rough idea of cost.

I called one Dublin place that had a big ad in the yellow pages and that features a gym, aerobics, 3 squash courts, circuit training, CardioVascular Room (I assume this means fitness equipment), fitness assessment, snack bar, sunbeds, saunas, steam room, and beauty room (the sunbeds and aromatherapy massages). It seems about average for a bigger one by the ads.

One year membership - €650
Half year membership - €400
3 month membership - €300

Swimming Pools and Leisure Centres

Most larger towns and all the cities have heated public swimming pools. While these cater quite nicely to the kids in the midday, they are wonderfully inexpensive and mostly underused places early in the morning (9am or so). All offer classes, and many feature additional attractions like saunas. Costs average about €5 to €10 for adults.

Hundreds of hotels throughout Ireland are now equipped with with leisure centres. Apparently leisure means great sports facilities. Large, heated swimming pools are now common, as are saunas, jacuzzis, steam rooms, fully equipped gyms, massage facilities, aerobics rooms, and sometimes even bowling alleys.

Prices vary but expect to pay at least €600 per annum for an adult membership, and €400 for six months. Some Dublin leisure centres are higher, particularly in the 5 star hotels. Hotel guests will mingle, but often children are banished to children's pools or forbidden the use of the main pool after 7:30pm.

Various Splash Worlds and the like have sprung up near near many of the resort towns (Tramore in the southeast, Trabolgan near Cork, Tralee in Kerry, Bundoran in Donegal, etc.) These are family places for rainy or bright summer days - many are closed in the winter.

Rural Facilities

Us country folk take a walk along the local rivers, climb hills or milk 50 cows every morning just for the exercise. Local streams and lakes are still sometimes used by local children, but this generation increasingly seems to have locked itself indoors. Most people are within a 20 minute drive of a local hotel with a leisure centre or a municipal swimming pool.

Most towns have walking clubs, running clubs and bicycle clubs. It's easy to get involved - stop in at a local sports facility or sporting goods shop and you'll walk out with the names and phone numbers of a list of contacts. And local papers contain announcements from groups about their upcoming activities.