YOUNG mum Tracy James has many happy memories of Bailey Park Pool and finds it sad that her daughter Megan, ten, is too young to have used it.

But her son Frank, 15, spent many happy hours there with all his family, including grandmothers Mrs Angela Williams and Mrs Jean James. Even his cousins from Birmingham, Daniel and Tomos James spent so many happy times there when staying with their grandparents in Llanfoist, that they still talk about it.

Tracy, of St David's Road, Abergavenny, lent us some of her family photographs to use, and we are hoping other readers will do the same. She said: "My earliest memory is going there to swim with either Llwynu infants or juniors school, and even when it was freezing cold we had to go in. I learned to swim there and I'd go straight after school every day it was open.

"It was a lovely family day out at weekends and in the school holidays, and I find it sad that Megan was born after the pool closed. Our mother Angela Williams used to take a flask of tea and a picnic and we'd all meet up there for the afternoon, as did lots of families."

Teresa Richards, the last chairman of the Friends of the Pool, recalled that on very hot days the superintendent and staff would have to hold two sessions to cope with the crowds.

"There were so many people wanting to use the pool in the 1950s they would have to limit the time everyone spent there. I went to the Catholic school and, like all other schools in the town, we went for swimming lessons in the morning, and returned for the public sessions after school. "I also used to go every Sunday morning with my dad, when the pool opened at 8am, and he'd swim a mile and I'd try and catch up with him. "Apart from my sister Linda, all of us learned to swim in Bailey Park pool, and she was only frightened of water because someone pushed her in. We used to go picking peas on Chandler's land to earn the money to pay for our season tickets.

"It didn't matter what the weather was like, we used to go to the pool every day, come rain, hail or wind, and that was what made you hardy. "We were so lucky to have the big pool with its diving board, and they added the middle pool and the toddler's when I was a teenager, leaving the wall to divide them.

"When I had my children it was the place to meet other young mums and their families. It was a real community in the summer. We took picnics and spent the afternoon there. My son Jamie was only a toddler when I started helping The Friends.

"We were blessed with some good people running the pool, they all put their heart and soul into it."