Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Reasonably priced, plenty of free parking . |
| Disadvantages: |
You have to pay for the whole year even if you leave . |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
My wife and I first joined Green's for the best of all reasons - they built it close to us. We had seen the advertising hoardings offering free memberships and so we visited the building site that would soon become the health and leisure centre itself and were impressed by the scale models that allowed us to see just what it would look like when it was finished.
The price of memberships looked good too. We opted for the off-peak tariff, as it suited our shift working patterns and, because I am a firefighter, I qualified for the corporate discount that saved me £10 a month. An unexpected bonus was that my wife also qualified for the discount just because she was married to me! so another tenner saved there then. All in all we ended up paying £25 a month each, which compared to the cost for other gyms in Leicester, seemed reasonable. This has since gone up to £31 but more equipment has been provided in the weights room. We also opted to enrol the kids (2 at £10 a month each, but more of that later). The off-peak tariff allows us to use all of the facilities from 0630 - 1700 from Monday to Friday and for the entire weekend.
So, what are the facilities? Here's a quick guided tour; On the ground floor we have a beauty salon (being a bloke this is like a foreign land to me) that provides the usual range of beauty treatments plus the recent addition of some very exotic sounding oil massage treatments (prices vary); There are more than adequate male and female changing facilities with a baby changing room attached to the ladies changing room. These lead to a 25 metre pool that is kept nicely warm most of the time and is flanked by 2 spa pools, a steam room, a sauna and some sun showers. There are also two tanning rooms that each have a very "space age" looking sunbed in them. There is also a cafe/bar area that that sells some nice food and a wide variety of drinks, although service can be a little slow, even when the
place is as good as empty.
Upstairs you will find the CV room that has plenty of treadmills, X trainers, bikes (upright and recumbent), rowing machines, steppers and hand winding machines. If you find training in the main room a little intimidating there is a separate ladies room that has all of these facilities also.There are lots of wide screen TV's along the walls showing a variety of programmes or you can listen to the piped music that is played over the tannoy system. The weight training room is well equipped although a little crowded in my opinion and there are two studios that provide a whole host of activities ranging from body pump to hatha yoga.
The place is kept clean and tidy and the staff are friendly and helpful.
Is it all wonderful, of course not.
De Vere (the parent company) make no apologies for the fact that they are aiming at an adult clientele and so the only facility available for the children is the pool and the times that they can use it are restricted. If your kids are school age you may just be able to nip in for 1/2 an hour or so after school if you are quick, otherwise you will have to wait for the weekend. So, in my opinion, their £10 fee is not fantastic value.
Each changing room is fitted with a spin drier for swimming costumes. These seem to be either leaking or out of order for longer than would seem normal (if our tumble drier performed that badly it would have gone back to the shop a long time ago).
Finally, beware!. If you join, you join for a year. So don't join in January if you think that you will be fed up with it in March, because you will still have to pay for the remaining nine months.
All in all though, its not a bad place to go and get some exercise and we are still members after 2 years so they must be doing something right.
Give them a look and see what you think.
Andy
