During the heatwave of this summer we decided to cool-off at Oasis Beach Pool in Bedford. It’s mainly indoors, so we kept out of the blazing sun, but there is an outdoor lazy river, which was lovely in the warm weather.

The building does look a bit tired on the outside, and there a few lockers and cubicles that didn't lock but it was clean and the water was the perfect temperature when we visited. There are 2 flumes (and I braved the fast one!), a wave machine that comes on at intervals, hot tubs, a children’s pool and some other fun water features.

You can book in advance on-line, which was a big draw because I’d hate to go so far and be disappointed, and sessions are an hour and a half long, which was just right for us and all the children really enjoyed it. During the holidays they run Family Splash sessions and Super Splash sessions, the latter has the wave machine and flumes open throughout.

Top tip: we arrived a few minutes after the start of the session (by accident rather than design due to traffic) and got out of the pool about 5 mins before the end, which meant we had no problems getting changing cubicles either way.  If you need the family ones you might want to get out 10 mins before because the change-over time felt a little manic as people were already queuing to get in for the next session, even though there was a half-hour gap!  

And if you’re like me, and dread going somewhere new where you don’t know what the parking will be like, you’ll be pleased to know it has a nice big car park (though I was fairly confident about this having checked the satellite image on Google maps beforehand! 😊)