Sport and Leisure
The Walnuts Leisure Centre, just east of the High Street, has a six-lane, 33.3 metre indoor swimming pool. Other facilities include squash courts and gym with sauna and steam room as well as a sports hall used for activities such as badminton, basketball, trampolining and fitness classes. The Sports hall is also used for Women's Artistic Gymnastics, being the training venue for Orpington Gymnastic Club.
The Walnuts has been home to one of Kent's leading swimming clubs Orpington Ojays for nearly 40 years. The club caters for those learning to swim right through to elite swimmers who wish to swim competitively at a County and National level.
There are two other local leisure centres: one at the Priory School, which has a floodlit, synthetic pitch for hockey and football, three outdoor tennis courts, two netball courts, four outdoor cricket nets and a sports hall with gymnasium/fitness suite and dance studio. The other is LA Fitness members-only health club on Sandy Lane.Also there is a bodybuilding gym located near the war memorial called Ripped Muscle And Fitness
There is also Keddles Gym and Jack Watson's martial arts club.
There are rugby, football and cricket pitches in Goddington Park. Westcombe Park RFC, Orpington Cricket Club and Orpington Football Club are based here. Westcombe Park RFC is one of Kent's premier clubs, competing in National Division Two (only two leagues away from premiership rugby). 'Combe' moved from the Blackheath area to Orpington in 1936. Cray Wanderers F.C., established in 1860 no longer plays in Orpington, but now shares a ground with Bromley F.C. The Wands are hopeful of a return to St Paul's Cray by 2014 and currently have a planning application pending, lodged with Bromley Council, to build a 5,000 capacity stadium and complex in Sandy Lane.
Since 1985, members of Orpington Road Runners have met every Tuesday near The Buff Pub and on Sundays at High Elms Country Park. For over 10 years, the Club has organised a 10k race and series of 2k fun runs during the summer in conjunction with Darrick Wood School. Bromley Indoor Bowls Club is situated off Gillmans Road. Lawn bowls is played at the Excelsior Club in Poverest Recreation Ground. Knoll Lawn Tennis Club has (despite its name) five tarmac courts tucked away among the houses of Mayfield Avenue. Bromley Tennis Centre (six indoor courts and four floodlit outdoor courts) is in the grounds of Newstead Wood School for Girls.
Orpington's former public library is at Priory Gardens, a site set back from the High Street and near to the historic parish church. Priory Gardens' Priory itself contains Bromley Museum. The public library moved in the Summer of 2011, into the site of the old Council offices off the Market Square. It was opened on the 5th July, 2011 by Adele Parks and Jo Johnson MP.
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Famous quotes containing the words sport and/or leisure:
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subject for Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland streams.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)