So, a swimming pool is an excellent alternative. Public swimming pools are all right, but you have to select your times carefully or the water is full of discourteous kids frolicking about or old people just standing in the way of serious swimmers.

This can be very maddening and frustrating, which are two of the emotions you went to the pool to divest yourself of after a hard day. You can actually come out feeling more frustrated and annoyed than you went in.

The solutions are: join a private swimming club or spa; construct your own pool; or marry someone who is rich. If you have the money, the best option of all is to have your own pool.

Although a swimming pool is costly, it is not money wasted. Not only will a swimming pool encourage you to assume a (more vigorous) fitness regime, a well-made swimming pool it will also add hugely to the value of your property.

People like to move into a home with a pool, because then they do not have to put up with builders and mounds of soil and jack-hammers and dumpers and noise for weeks and weeks on end.

Even better is if the pool has been well cultivated with trees and bushes in the right places to supply shade if required and sweetly scented flowers and bushes to provide wonderful smells wafting by on a breeze. All this ought to be set in a well-manicured lawn.

It is likely that you will have to have some kind of pool fence, depending on where you live, so check on that, but put the fence as far back from the pool as you can or are allowed. You do not want to feel hemmed into your swimming pool.

There are two alternatives with pools; above and below ground. But there is no real choice if you have the space and money – it has to be below ground each time.

One of the cheapest options of underground swimming pools is to use fibreglass. It is a far cheaper way than a lot of people know. In fact, it passes most people by because they do not know about it. However, imagine all the labour it saves on butyl liners, waterproofing, tiling, grouting, etc.

The fibreglass pool is dropped into a hole and then you paint it – blue or green or turquoise, if you cannot make up your mind; tile the surround and you are done. Then it is on with your favourite swimming costume and in you go.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on various subjects, but is now concerned with Plus Size Bikinis. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Swimwear for Big Busts.