The Littledown Centre is one of Bournemouth's biggest leisure venues, a sprawling indoor and outdoor sports complex just inland from Boscombe, run by the charitable operator BH Live Active. It's a working leisure centre rather than a tourist attraction, but a genuinely useful stop if you're staying nearby and fancy a swim, a gym session, or somewhere for the kids to burn off energy on a rainy day.
Pools, gym and spa
Indoors there's a 25-metre main pool alongside a smaller 17-metre teaching pool, plus a spa area with a sauna, steam room and sanarium. The centre is home to the Bournemouth Swimming Academy, which runs children's lessons following the Swim England pathway, and its gym has cardio, resistance and free-weight equipment alongside group exercise studios running well over a hundred classes a week, everything from spin to aerobics.
Sport, soft play and outdoors
An eight-court sports hall hosts badminton, five-a-side football, gymnastics and trampolining, and doubles up for community events. Younger children are well catered for too, with an Ofsted-registered crèche and a soft play area. Outside, the centre backs onto floodlit 3G and grass pitches, a cricket pitch and parkland, home turf for the Littledown Juniors football club, which runs teams for children from age three upwards.
Visiting
The centre keeps long hours through the week, broadly 5am to 9pm Monday to Friday, shorter at weekends and on bank holidays, though gym, pool and class times vary by session, so it's worth checking the online timetable before you go. Up to three hours' parking is free on site, and there's a café for a post-swim coffee. It's a short drive or bus ride from Boscombe and the seafront, see our guide to things to do in Bournemouth for more ways to fill a day in the town.