I agree with nottinghillbilly. I am an old person with chronic back problems who finds walking long distances, and most other forms of exercise, increasingly tiring and sometimes painful. I have been advised by physiotherapists and osteopaths to swim twice a week. I don't enjoy it particularly, but I feel (and I appreciate there may not be conclusive empirical evidence for this) that it is helping to keep me out of a wheelchair for a few years yet, and also, by giving me a bit of a cardio-vascular workout, helping to postpone my first stroke.

I and my wife appreciate the dedicated over-60 swimming sessions at FH Pools. I realise that their existence may tend to irritate other pool users, but old people (many of whom are far more disabled than I) tend to swim slowly and unassertively, and we would prefer to avoid the prospect of getting in the way of the Greek gods and goddesses with gleaming skin, well-chiselled musculature, taut buttocks and skimpy trunks who like to charge up and down the pool at high speed.

We personally would be quite happy to pay a reasonable charge for the privilege of swimming, but I doubt whether all our fellow elderly swimmers, who presumably gain at least as big a health benefit as we do, would easily be able to afford to do so.