I love my swimming lessons. I promised myself a few years back, when I was swimming very regularly and clocked up between 3 and 6 miles a week of (totally rubbish, I realise with hindsight) breaststroke that once I got a proper job I'd pay for lessons and finally crack front crawl. Crawl has the advantage, theoretically, of being quicker so you can get a mile done in less time - and of course having a range of strokes avaialble to you means that you can vary your routine and keep it a bit more interesting.
So I started in the 'Adult Improvers' just over three years ago. And then found out that I was pregnant about 6 weeks into the term! I kept swimming and going to the lessons, and got my first length of full stroke fly under my belt at nearly 7 months pregnant. I took a 2 month break from 8 and a bit months, and was back in the class when the littly was just under 7 weeks old. It took me another year to progress to making it past 2 lengths of crawl though - it's definitely my weakest stroke and is scarcely faster than my breaststroke. I can plod along at it for 400m without feeling like I'm actually going to drown now though - which was absolutely unimaginable a year ago. I'm now in the 'advanced' class - although I am the slowest one in there by quite some margin! I don't get to the pool anywhere near as often as I'd like but I always get at least one swim and one aquafit class a week in. I find swimming relaxing and invigorating and, when I had the time to do it, swimming every day whether it was a quick 20 minutes dash or a leisurely 2 hour plod was incredibly good for my physical and mental well-being. For a start, I lost loads of weight as spending on average 9 to 10 hours a week in the water limits your cake eating opportunities!
I'd heartily recommend lessons to anyone who isn't confident, wants to brush up their technique or needs a bit of a kick up the bum to motivate them. Plus we can get a 12 week term of 1 hour lessons for about 70 quid round here - which is unbelievably good value even without the 10 free swims they give you too!