Seven hundred visitors arrived around noon. “I think that’s a lot, yes,” says Trea Ruthers from the De Leemdobben swimming pool in Vries. “I said: if we reach five hundred we can be happy, but there are already seven hundred enthusiasts.”
Especially for the fiftieth anniversary, the swimming pool has been decorated with red and white streamers, there is a 40-metre long obstacle course next to the swimming pool and admission is free. In addition, there are free poffertjes, children’s faces are painted and a clown is folding figures from balloons.
“It’s free, to make it accessible to everyone,” Rutgers explains. Today the swimming pool also presents a new logo and has honored one of the mainstays of the past.
The future of the bath hung by a thread in the 1990s. The city council thought it was too expensive and wanted to get rid of it. Johannes Venema then sought support in the village to finance the swimming pool. During the party, the path to the entrance to the swimming pool was named after him. Ruthers: “His wife did that, Marie. Johannes really did a lot for the swimming pool and without him we would no longer have this pool, I think.”
A swimmer on the sunbathing lawn proudly reports that she has been a loyal visitor for 45 years. “We thought the swimming pool was much older. Only fifty years old. And then I have been coming here to this swimming pool for 45 years.” According to her, not much has changed in the meantime. “You always start there when you’re young,” she says, pointing to the shallow pool. “And a lot has been added, of course, but the swimming pool itself is still exactly the same.”
