Aquatics » Swim Centers

Clarke Memorial Swim Center

Open year round · three pools · Heather Farm Park

A 50-meter heated pool open all year, a 25-meter pool with a diving board, and a heated wading pool. 1750 Heather Dr, Walnut Creek. Front desk (925) 943-5859.

Live from Pool Relay · open the full calendar → — Use the Pools menu to move between the 50-meter, 25-meter and wading pools.

The three pools

Pool	Season	What runs in it
50-meter, heated	Year round	Adult lap swim (13+), water exercise, recreational swim, swim lessons, Masters
25-meter, with a 1-meter board	Summer for lessons and rec swim	Year round for Aquanuts synchronized swim practice
Wading pool, 3 feet, heated	Spring, summer and fall	Swim lessons, in three bays — East, Middle and West

The lane table, and the twelve lanes it cannot see

Walnut Creek does something unusual and genuinely useful: it publishes lap swim as a table of lane counts rather than as opening hours — 8 lanes, then 20, then 8, then 14. That answers “how many lanes do I get?” and nothing else.

It cannot say what the other twelve lanes are doing, because the city does not run them. The Masters team publishes its own practice times, on its own website, in a different system entirely. Put both on one calendar and the arithmetic closes exactly, band after band.

Two independent sources reconciling to exactly twenty is far better evidence than either one alone — and a swimmer can finally see that 8:00–10:30 is the one window when the whole pool is public.

Adult lap swim

Ages 13+, $8 drop-in. Circle swimming is enforced and instruction of any kind is prohibited. Monthly and yearly passes are available.

Time	Public lap swim	Masters	The 20-lane pool
5:30 – 8:00 am	8	12	20
8:00 – 10:30 am	20	—	20
10:30 am – 1:00 pm	8	12	20
1:00 – 4:00 pm	14	—	20
7:00 – 8:00 pm	8	12	20

Weekends run 11:00 am–4:00 pm with 14 lanes. The Masters column is ours, not the city's — see the questions at the foot of this page.

Swim lessons

Ten levels from Guppy (6 months, parent in the water) through Shark, plus Adult & Teen, adaptive-needs lessons and one-to-one privates. The current four-week session runs Tuesdays and Thursdays. The wading pool teaches three classes at once, side by side.

Bay or lane	Levels taught there	Tue & Thu start times
Wading — East	Level 2 Starfish	4:30 · 5:50 · 6:30
Wading — Middle	Level 3 Seahorse	4:30 · 5:50
Wading — West	Level 4 Lobster	4:30 · 5:10 · 5:50 · 6:30
50m Lane 1	Level 1 Guppy, Level 5 Seal, Level 6 Dolphin	5:10 · 6:30
50m Lane 2	Private lessons	4:30 · 5:05 · 5:40 · 6:15

Live from Pool Relay · open the full calendar → — Classes run late afternoon — scroll to 4:30pm, or tap LIST.

Recreational swim, water exercise and rentals

What	When	Notes
Recreational swim	Weekends, 12:00–5:00 pm	Rest break 2:40–3:00. Adult $8 / Youth 7–17 $7 / Child 0–6 $6
Inflatable obstacle courses	Summer rec-swim hours	$3 Splash Pass on top of admission; staffing and heat permitting
Water exercise	Tue, Wed, Thu — 8:15 shallow, 9:15 deep	Not currently running — the city is looking for an instructor
South Patio picnic rental	Weekends, 11 April – 27 September	5 tables, BBQ, refrigerator. Up to 60 guests. $200 spring/fall, $300 summer
Pavilion rental	Summer weekends, 13 June – 9 August	4 tables under shade, up to 40 guests. $250

Water exercise is on the page but not on the calendar The city lists the times and then says it has no instructor. A calendar entry would hold that water whatever its description said, so the slots were deliberately left off. If the water is still being reserved for the class, it should go on — that is one of the questions below.

Questions for the aquatics office

Everything here was transcribed from what Walnut Creek publishes. These are the places where the published sources disagree, go quiet, or where we had to make a call — each one is marked on the calendar entry itself.

ConflictEvening lap swim: Monday–Thursday, or Monday–Friday?

The Current Lap Swim Hours box says Mon–Thu 7–8pm. The lane-allocation table directly below it says Mon–Friday for the same band. Entered as Mon–Thu.
ConflictGuppy and Seal are booked into the same lane at 5:10pm

Class #85243 (Guppy) and #85260 (Seal) are both recorded on 50m Lane 01, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:10, across all four session dates. That is the registration system's own data. Which one is actually in Lane 1?
ConflictSaturday 11:00 — lessons or lap swim on Lanes 1–2?

The allocation table hands lanes 1–14 to lap swim from 11:00 on weekends, while a Saturday Guppy class and two private lessons sit on Lanes 1 and 2. Pool Relay suggests shifting lap swim to lanes 3–16, which is presumably what happens on deck — the page never says so.
OursHow many lanes does Masters actually get?

The team publishes times but never lanes. We entered 12 — the balance of the 20-lane short course after the city's published public allocation. It closes perfectly in every weekday band, but the Saturday 9:30–10:45 practice has no published allocation to bound it at all.
GapIs water exercise running?

The page lists Tue/Wed/Thu at 8:15 (shallow) and 9:15 (deep), then says “unfortunately we do not have an instructor at this time.” Those slots are deliberately not on the calendar — an event holds water no matter what its description says. Is the water still reserved, or released to lap swim?
GapWhere do the Aquanuts and the Swim Club train?

Masters and the Aquabears publish practice times. The Aquanuts and the summer Swim Club occupy real water on a real schedule that nothing public describes — see their pages above.
ConflictSenior Aquabears at 5:30am — which water?

The team publishes Senior practice Tuesday and Friday, 5:30–7:00 a.m. At that hour the city’s lane table gives all twenty lanes to lap swim (8) and Masters (12). Those two practices are not on the calendar until someone says which schedule is right.
OursAquabears lane counts

The team publishes times but never lanes. We split the 20 short-course lanes between the groups in the water: Senior and Purple on Lanes 1–10, Gold on 11–20.
GapWeekend recreational swim — still running, and in which pool?

The page lists recreational swim under both the 50-meter and the 25-meter pool. We put it in the 25-meter pool, because the allocation table already commits 14 of the 20 short-course lanes to lap swim at that hour.
OursWhen do Larkey's weekday sprayground hours run?

The $3 sprayground-only hours (Mon–Thu, 10:30–12:30 and 4:30–6:30) are published without dates. We used the Memorial Day–Labor Day season the swim pass names, stopping before Labor Day itself — the center was weekends-only by September.