There’s nothing better than a cooling dip during a heat wave, but not everyone is waiting for a sizzling pool. For example, if you are autistic or if you want to be able to rehabilitate quietly, it is nice not to have children around you all the time. Since this swimming season, Veenhuizen Open Air Swimming Pool has been offering ‘stimulus-free swimming’ especially for this group. On Tuesday and Friday mornings it is wonderfully quiet in the water for an hour.
Six swimmers, including two children, float around in Veenhuizen on Friday morning. Temperatures are already above 25 degrees, but there is no sign of crowds yet. Exactly as intended during the ‘stimulating hour’. “It’s delicious,” says Annie Tjassing from Veenhuizen. For the first time in a long time she is swimming in ‘her’ open air bath again. Lyme disease plunged her body into a deep depression, to the point where she could only move her eye. After years of rehabilitation, she is now trying to learn to walk independently again. Exercising in the pool can help with that.
“You move well and of course you meet a lot of people, I think that’s important,” says Tjassing. She would have preferred to have come earlier during the low-stimulus hour. “But I had a wound on my leg.”
The swimming pool in Veenhuizen has a special lift, which can effortlessly get disabled people into the water. “Of course you stand out,” says Tjassing, pointing to the elevator. “But I don’t mind. It’s great to be in the water.”
This also applies to the girls of De Geitenmeijerij, who slide over the water on a floating mat. The people of the care farm in Fochteloo know where to find the swimming pool every day, says treasurer Corneel Beijert. “They are here all day long in the summer,” she says. “Now there are two girls with autism, for whom it is otherwise a bit too busy in the pool.”
Although Beijert calls the low-stimulus hour a success, she hopes that more people will sign up for it. “Anyone can come,” she says. “For example, we have a woman from Assen who would like to rehabilitate. She read in the newspaper that we offer this and asked if she could come. Of course you can! As long as it doesn’t get too busy.”
2022 is an excellent year for the Veenhuizen Open Air Swimming Pool. The swimming pool has been thoroughly renovated and facilities for disabled visitors have been addressed. “We received a substantial subsidy from the municipality for the approach to the swimming pool,” says treasurer Beijert. “But then they informed us that the swimming pool had to be more accessible for people with disabilities. The special lift was then purchased – again with a subsidy from the municipality.”
The swimming pool in Veenhuizen – the oldest open-air swimming pool in Drenthe – is therefore ready for the future. “Everything looks spic and span,” says Beijert. “New tiles, new starting blocks and solar collectors. We actually also want a heat pump now, but that is something for the future. You won’t hear us complaining.”