by Alison Lawler
Winter may not seem like the ideal time to go swimming, but a winter trip to the local pool is very much a national pastime in Russia.
It's one way of escaping the winter cold and getting some exercise in the bargain.
When I go for my weekly swim at one of St Petersburg's better pools, The Navy Pool at 87 Sredny Prospect on Vasilyevsky Ostrov, I inevitably encounter the pungent whiff of chlorine as I enter.
Music from a radio is playing in the background, and the warm water surrounds me as I glide from one side of the pool to the other. The cold winter day begins slowly to slip from my mind. The crowded buses and metro and the muddy, icy streets begin to seem very far away. I begin to feel calmer.
The American writer Henry David Thoreau wrote of the cleansing effect of a daily plunge. Although he was writing about his beloved Walden Pond and was referring to a submersion into nature, some of the same spiritually uplifting qualities exist while submerging oneself in the waters of a pool.
The Navy Pool is fifty meters long, four and a half meters deep, and has eight lanes. There is also a smaller children's pool located behind the main pool.
The pool was built in 1979, under the joint efforts of the Soviet Navy and the Soviet minister of defense. It was built initially as a training complex for the Naval detachment BMF B Leningrad, but is now open to the public.
Within the sports complex there's a sauna and two weight rooms, one for women and the other for men. The sauna is separate from the pool. If you wish to use the sauna you must call in advance and set up a time. The rate is 15,000 roubles for a two-hour period.
The pool is open daily from 7am-9pm and to get membership you must have proof of a recent medical check-up and 140,000 roubles for a five-month period. When you join the pool you choose an appropriate time and day and then this is your set time for using the sports facilities.
You can use both the sports hall and the pool for half an hour. All the other pools scattered throughout the city tend to follow this same method of membership.