Finding your own river swimming or lake swimming location

Britain is bubbling with glorious little river and lake swmiming holes, all of your own. They are there for the finding, but how to go about it?

Ask around: some older folks may remember when a local river or lake was used for swimming in hot summers of the past. Younger people too often know a good place to jump in, go for a plunge or find that ubiquitous blue rope swimng tied to a tree. Fishermen and kayakers are also good sources, as our keen walkers.

Look for clues on a map: why not follow a river along its length? Many have footpaths that follow the bankside. Buy an Ordnance Survey map of your area (Purple Landrager 1:50,000 or Orange Explore 1:25,000), or use www.multimap.co.uk online. They will identify all the water features in your area. Weirs are marked and swimming is often popular in the pools above or below. Bridges sometimes cross sections where the river naturally narrows and deepens, so examine these. Bends are always good, as the river shallows to a beach on the inside, but deepens to a pool on the outside. Legal access is important so also examine footbridges, riverside footpaths, road fords and other places where a right of way comes into contact with the water.  In highland areas look for any mountain lake and examine waterfalls, where marked.

Look online:  

Finding wild swimming places in the guidebook

"Wild Swimming: 150 hidden dips" provides grid references, postcodes and direcions for 150 freshwater wild swimming spots in Britain.  An additional 80 swims are also included with grid references only. (NB You can see if your favourite area is covered on the coverage map). 

There are three methods to find each location. 

1) Directions: Follow the step-by-step written directions that come with each of the wild swims. These will get you to all 230 places but you might like the added help of using a map as well, or the convenienece of using a postcode with SatNav too (read on). Click here for more on using the directions.

2) Postcodes: Every swim has also been located with both a postcode (useful for those relying on SatNav devices in cars). The postcode
only pinpoints the swim to within about 1km (in rural areas), so a distance
is sometimes given next to it e.g. ‘500m N’ means ‘look 500m north of
the postcode’. POstcodes are also helpful in Google Maps (which don't accept grid references). 

3) Maps and Grid References: OS eight-digit grid references (two letters, six numbers, no spaces) are the most accurate reference and will guide you to within 100m of the wild swim place. You can print out a 1:25,000 or 1:50,000 map for free on the web. 

Here's how:

Multimap provides free 1:50,000 OS mapping (the purple Landranger maps) essential for navigation in the countryside. Streetmap also provides this format. Type in the Grid Reference provided in the book (e.g. SN896093: two letters, six numbers, no spaces). A map appears and you can chose between the TeleAtlas format or the Ordance Survey (OS) format (in the top left of the map click the Map button and the arrow key next to it). You can also zoom in or out (the Ordnace Survey option is only available at some zoom levels). Then print your map and take it with you. Voila!

You can only find the hardcore 1:25,000 OS walking maps (the orange Explorer maps, even better for finding remote places) at the Ordnance Survey Get-A-Map website. Click on the purple ‘Get-a-Map’ button and type in your grid reference with no spaces. You can then print out the section by clicking 'save / print / copy'.

Wild outdoor swim map from Google!

 We’ve loaded up a range of wild swims into the nice maps from Google. You can find them here. We've added a litle selection from the Wild Swimming book but it’s mainly a place for new outdoor swims.  Please consider becoming a 'collaborator' (!) on Google maps and uploading your own favourite places with photos so we can help grow this collection. Alternatively email us at swims AT wildswimming.co.uk and we’ll upload them for you.