EMBASSY, SKEGNESS
24th June 2017
What does the word ‘Skegness’ say to you?
Since I went there to swim I’ve asked a few people that. If you live in, and / or love, Skegness you may want to skip the next paragraph. It might sting a bit.
The universal instantaneous response was a slight wrinkling of the nose, as though I had asked them to sit between a skunk and a porcupine on an overbooked long haul flight. Once they could get the words out those words were often ‘cheesy’, ‘plastic tat’, ‘hen parties’, ‘scruffy’ and ‘where?’
And, to be fair, had I been asked I’d probably have said the exact same thing. And, to be even fairer, now that I have been I’d probably still struggle to disagree with 3 out of 5. I didn’t see any hen parties, but at 9am on a Saturday morning they were probably still drinking bacardi in a motorway service station en route and, obviously, now that I’ve been to Skegness I do know where it is. And it is a long, long, long way away. Metaphorically as well as literally.
It is a scruffy town, and there was plenty of plastic souvenir tat and cheesy looking shops and sideshows around. The Grand Parade is rather misleadingly named, and the funfair rides and walls around the theme park hide the sea from view; but where else can you drive past a fairly unappealing looking Yates’ Wine Lodge only to have a crystal blue lido, in a little sunken garden, leap out at you and make your heart sing from the depths to which it has sunk after an hour on the road through the Lincolnshire flatlands? Nowhere. And therein lies some charm… when things are not as they first appear I find that appealing. Up to a point, anyway.
And Embassy pool very much lifts Skegness beyond what it first appears to be. I only had a short time to swim, less than 20 minutes, as this was the first pool on my mammoth 5 pools in a day leg of the Lincolnshire lido road trip. I’d spent a lot of time asking myself whether I could be bothered to go to Skegness. The other Lincolnshire pools are helpfully clustered together but Skegness exists on the fringes. In many ways. You have to really want to go there.
The next time I ask myself whether I can be bothered to go somewhere I’m going to say one word to myself… Skegness. I’m so glad I bothered. The changing rooms are down at heel, but the rest of the facility is lovely. The outdoor pool is little short of glorious, with a beach area for children and a decent sized main tank for some proper swimming. The whole thing is surrounded by gardens and sun loungers and when I sat on one for a while, bathed in morning sunlight and the promise of the full day to come, I felt as though I were in the Mediterranean somewhere. Not Skeg-vegas, as the sign I’d see later that day at Billinghay pool gloriously re-named it. I’d only sat down to sneak a photograph (don’t get me started on daft photography policies again) but I wished I could have spread out my towel, fished out my book and dipped in and out of the water for hours.
And I wouldn’t have had far to go for chips, a cheeky hat and a souvenir snowglobe afterwards. Why is the Great British Seaside so keen on snow globes anyway?
I can’t answer that question. But if you ask me ‘should I make the effort to swim at Skegness?’ my answer will be an emphatic ‘yes’.


Pledge at https://unbound.com/books/lidoguide for a copy of the first ever user guide to publicly accessible outdoor pools across the UK. A practical, beautiful and inspiring book telling you all you need to know to plan your own lido road trips.
