About WhereToSwim.eu
One question, asked properly: is it safe to swim here today? A map will show you a beach. It will not tell you the water is under a pollution notice this afternoon.
What this is
A live directory of 959 sea, lake and river swimming spots across Ireland and the four nations of the United Kingdom, covering 114 areas. Every spot page shows what the national monitoring body currently publishes: the annual bathing-water classification, recent bacterial samples, any open pollution alert, and — where the agency provides one — a short-term pollution forecast.
The five agencies each publish their own data, in their own formats, on their own sites. Nobody joins them up. That join is what this site is for.
Why it exists
Cold-water and open-water swimming has grown enormously, and the information needed to do it sensibly is scattered across five government portals, in shapes designed for regulatory reporting rather than for someone standing on a beach holding a towel.
The EU Bathing Water Directive means every country measures the same things to the same standard. That shared standard is what makes one site across several countries possible at all.
What it will never do
Tell you a beach is safe. We report what an agency published and we name that agency; we inspect nothing, and bathing-water monitoring covers bacteria and nothing else. The reasoning, the sources and seven explicit limitations are set out in how we know.
Advertising will never touch that information. A business can be featured near a spot; a spot can never be sponsored safe.
Who publishes it
WhereToSwim.eu is published by Sevenoways Innovations Limited. It is independent of every agency whose data it carries, and endorsed by none of them.
Corrections are genuinely welcome — a wrong pin, a stale description, a spot we have missed. Write to hello@wheretoswim.eu.