David Lloyd Leisure

Well located, good facilities but needs to be at 175 gbp a month for a family of four!

This place is a top rank health and fitness establishment.
The changing rooms are spacious and well kept. The lockers have ample room to hang your shirt and store all your belongings.
The floor tiles were nice and warm as well. Heated? Maybe, or perhaps my feet were just particularly cold … (email and ask me about heat transfer if you like, I used to teach Science…)
The swimming pool is about 20m so not quite long enough for my liking but more than ample. They have a couple of lanes set aside for dedicated lengths and the rest of the pool is open for a free swim. To add to the luxury of the pool area there is a spa/​hot tub, sauna and steam room (Me like the steam room!). The shower area in the changing rooms are also well kept. Their is a great machine that shakes your swim wear almost dry in a few seconds (I call him Shakey) to prevent your bag from getting soaking wet. Nice touch.
The gym itself has a large array of cardiovascular machines including steppers, treadmills and various other contraptions. There is also a choice between free weights or machines depending on your preference.
The club room serves food/​drinks and has a few bigscreen TV scattered about the place with sports or news on show. There are a couple of PC’s available not to mention the wifi setup. Being a David Lloyd centre it is big on racquet sports so there are squash, badminton and tennis courts aplenty.
The centre boasts a large car park and is right next door to the park and ride so it is fairly well set up for commuters and drivers.
The downside of this fitness paradise —- Expense! I am not a member (I’m allowed in while my local pool is being repaired) but I am told the monthly fee can be as much as £80 a month. Who knows? You know it is going to be expensive though when a company doesn’t list its price on their own website! This aside, it is still the best fitness/​leisure centre I’ve ever been to.

This is the extremely plush leisure centre set up by former pro tennis player David Lloyd. If this means nothing to you, he’s the less good brother of former British number one John Lloyd, who also wasn’t that good though he did get to marry Chris Evert back in the day, so he must have been doing something right.
As you’d probably expect, the main focus here is tennis — indeed they probably have the best facilities in the city here, with more courts than you can shake a racquet at and lessons on offer. I’ve only used the gym and these are also top notch, with every gadget you can think of (the running machines are even equipped with individual TV screens with Sky Sports to entertain you while you slog away).
This is, of course, very expensive though — I only went because I was given a free pass — and unless you have a real devotion to tennis or fitness and live near Ashton, it’s probably not worth the expense or the journey.

David Lloyd offers exceptional facilities for the keeen fitness family and I say family because I do feel it is pretty child friendly and even offers some classes where you take young babies which I think is a great idea. The only thing I would say is the pool, although big, isn’t that inviting when everyone in the gym is watching you as its bang smack in the middle!