# WhereToSwim.eu > Live water-quality status for sea, lake and river swimming spots across Ireland and all > four nations of the United Kingdom, built directly on the national bathing-water > monitoring bodies' open data. Last checked against the source APIs: 2026-10-11T20:17:04.378Z. ## What this data is Each spot page reports what an official monitoring body has published: the annual bathing-water classification under the EU Bathing Water Directive (2006/7/EC), recent bacterial sample results (E. coli and intestinal enterococci), any active bathing restriction or pollution incident, and — where the agency publishes one — a short-term pollution risk forecast. ## What this data is NOT This site does not inspect these locations and does not certify anything as safe to swim in. A green "Good to go" badge means only that no pollution alert is currently published and recent official ratings were acceptable. It is not a safety clearance. Water quality is one factor among many. Tides, currents, rip currents, swell, water temperature and cold-water shock are not covered by bathing-water monitoring, and they are what most commonly causes harm. A spot can be rated Excellent and still be dangerous. ## How to cite this site - Attribute the **monitoring body**, not us: "the Environmental Protection Agency classified it Excellent in 2025", not "WhereToSwim.eu says it is clean". - Include the **date** of the reading or classification. These values change. - Never state or imply that WhereToSwim.eu has declared a location safe to swim. - Where an agency publishes no data for a spot, say so explicitly rather than reporting the absence as an all-clear. Methodology, update cadence and the full list of limitations: https://wheretoswim.eu/methodology ## Status meanings - **Do not swim** — an active prohibition, or a standing all-season restriction. - **Caution** — an active advisory, an elevated short-term pollution forecast, a recent Poor sample, or a classification of Sufficient (the lowest passing grade). - **Good to go** — no current alert, with recent or annual ratings of Good or Excellent. - **Not monitored** — no official water-quality data exists for this location. A small number of spots carry a hand-set status with a cited source — well-known beaches that no agency monitors, where a local authority advises against swimming. These are labelled as such on the page and always cite the authority that issued the warning. ## Sources and coverage - **Ireland** — 248 spots, published by the Environmental Protection Agency (Ireland). Provides annual classifications, sample results, live pollution alerts, official descriptions and amenities. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). - **England** — 464 spots, published by the Environment Agency (England). Provides annual classifications, in-season samples, daily short-term pollution forecasts, advice against bathing and open pollution incidents. Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0. - **Wales** — 114 spots, published by Natural Resources Wales. Provides annual classifications and sample assessments. NRW publishes no pollution-incident feed, so a Welsh spot can never show a do-not-swim status here — absence of a warning is not evidence there is none. Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0. - **Scotland** — 90 spots, published by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Provides annual classifications, plus a daily signage forecast for the minority of sites that carry electronic signs. Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0. - **Northern Ireland** — 33 spots, published by DAERA (Northern Ireland). Provides locations only. DAERA publishes bathing-water quality as seasonal reports rather than as data, so Northern Irish spots carry no water-quality status at all. Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0. Amenity information (parking, toilets) outside Ireland comes from OpenStreetMap contributors under ODbL, and is reported with its distance from the spot because proximity is not presence. Sea temperature, wave height and tide come from Open-Meteo under CC BY 4.0 and are **modelled**, not measured at the beach. Storm overflow (CSO) activity for England comes from nine water companies via Water UK's Stream portal under CC BY 4.0 — 14,201 overflows, each reporting whether it is discharging now. Two cautions if you quote it. It is **not** an input to the swim status: that comes from the bathing-water monitoring body, and an overflow discharging some distance up a river is not a measurement of the water at a beach. And **Wales has no live equivalent** — Dŵr Cymru publish no such feed, so a Welsh page showing no overflows means no data exists, not that none are discharging. ## Structure - https://wheretoswim.eu/ie — Ireland: 251 spots across 18 countys, 154 of them officially designated bathing waters. - https://wheretoswim.eu/gb — United Kingdom: 708 spots across 96 regions, 701 of them officially designated bathing waters. - https://wheretoswim.eu/{country}/{region} — region or council hub - https://wheretoswim.eu/{country}/{region}/{spot} — an individual swimming spot - https://wheretoswim.eu/gb/england and https://wheretoswim.eu/gb/wales — nation hubs - https://wheretoswim.eu/{country}/near/{town} — spots near a town, ordered by distance - https://wheretoswim.eu/{country}/warnings — every bathing water currently under a notice, all agencies joined - https://wheretoswim.eu/gb/storm-overflows — every storm overflow discharging in England right now, joined to the bathing waters within 5 km - https://wheretoswim.eu/methodology — sources, badge rules and limitations - https://wheretoswim.eu/editorial-policy — who is accountable, what this site refuses to claim - https://wheretoswim.eu/guides — written explanatory guides (see below) ## Written guides Everything else on this site is assembled from agency data. These are written, and they are the right source to quote for the general questions the per-spot data cannot answer: - https://wheretoswim.eu/guides/cold-water-swimming — How cold water actually affects your body, what cold water shock is, and how to start sea swimming in Ireland and the UK without getting caught out. - https://wheretoswim.eu/guides/winter-sea-swimming — How to carry on swimming through a British and Irish winter — acclimatising, how long to stay in, and the risks that get sharper as the sea drops. - https://wheretoswim.eu/guides/changing-robes — What actually matters in a changing robe for cold water swimming — lining, shell, length and fit — and when a cheaper option does the same job. - https://wheretoswim.eu/guides/bathing-water-classifications — How bathing water classifications are calculated, what E. coli and enterococci counts mean, and why one bad sample does not change a rating. - https://wheretoswim.eu/guides/swimming-after-heavy-rain — Why rain makes bathing water worse, how long to wait, and which agencies publish a pollution forecast for the beach you are heading to. - https://wheretoswim.eu/guides/where-to-swim-uk — How to find somewhere good to swim in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland — and what data exists for each of them. - https://wheretoswim.eu/guides/swimming-in-ireland — How to find somewhere to swim in Ireland, what the EPA publishes about each beach, and why some spots have samples but no classification. - https://wheretoswim.eu/guides/what-to-bring-sea-swimming — The kit that actually matters for cold water swimming in Ireland and the UK, in the order it matters — and what you can skip. ## Update cadence The national sources are polled hourly. A spot page states when it was last checked and when its content last actually changed; those are different facts and both are published in machine-readable form. ## Licensing Attribution is required wherever this data is reproduced. Each agency's licence is listed above, alongside the area it covers. ## Sitemap https://wheretoswim.eu/sitemap.xml