A guide to open water swimming around Leeds
Before you read anything else - please make sure you are familiar with cold water shock, cold incapacitation, afterdrop and hypothermia, and look at the safety tips.
This site aims to provide an intro to swimming outdoors (also known as ‘wild’ or open water swimming) in the Leeds area. It can feel scary to do something many of us were warned about as kids, and when we hear about deaths at local swimming spots. However with knowledge, planning and a healthy respect for the water, open water swimming can be the most fun you can have, with or without your neoprene on.
This site costs almost £250 per year, not including my time. If this site has been useful to you please consider sending me a few quid at paypal.me/openwaterleeds or buying something from the store.
Open water swimming involves risks and it is your responsibility to understand and assess these risks. If you are not a regular open water swimmer, take it slow, respect the water and ‘float to live’.
Fight your instinct to thrash around.
Lean back, extend your arms and legs.
If you need to, gently move them around to help you float.
Float until you can control your breathing.
Only then, call for help, swim to safety or continue floating until help arrives.
No information on this website should be taken to mean that it is safe or permitted to swim at any place discussed. This website details places where people do swim, but you must always make your own risk assessment when swimming outdoors.
Getting started
Want to try swimming outdoors?
How can you stay safe swimming outdoors?
What kit do you need? (short answer: not much)
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a wetsuit?
Is it safe?
How can I find someone to swim with?
Where do I leave my phone?
and more …
Swimspots
Here are some of the places to swim around Leeds. These details are provided for information. These are places where people have swum in the past. There is no guarantee that it is safe or legal to swim in these places. Please treat these places with respect.
As open water swimming grows in popularity, the pressure and impact on these sites are growing. In order to keep the goodwill of the communities near these spots we need to be respectful of these places and their residents (humans and animals). Please think about the impact our presence has, for example, parking, litter, erosion of paths and banks, and try to minimise this. As of summer 2021 I’ve removed some guides due to them becoming too busy to be sustainable. If you know one spot will be busy, think about trying out a different spot, or going at a different time of day.
Rivers
The Wharfe
The Nidd
Lakes
Paid Venues
The following are all links to external sites.
Highly recommended beautiful spot with (gasp) changing rooms and (gasp) a lovely sauna (booking required). Swimming is unsupervised.
The following venues provide a place to experience open water swimming in a safer environment. Blue Lagooners and Swim your Swim offer intro to open water courses.
Leeds and Bradford Triathlon Club run open water sessions in Otley May to September. But be aware that you must wear a wetsuit if the water temperature is below 20 degrees.
Outdoor swim coaching
Lucy Gratton - swimoutdoors.co.uk
Lucy is a qualified swimming teacher and coach based in Nidderdale and runs introduction to Open Water sessions and Wild swim experiences for small groups or 1:1s.
Want to know more or meet other swimmers?
This site was designed to support the FLOWS community on Facebook (Fabulous Leeds Outdoor Wild Swimmers). Joining FLOWS is how I started open water swimming and is the best way to keep up to date with what is happening and find others to swim with.
Other local groups on Facebook;
SOUP (Sheffield OUtdoor Plungers)
KAPOWS (Kirklees and Penistone Outdoor and Wild Swimmers)
Wild Wanderers is a women only group for general outdoorsy stuff, including open water swimming
And the best places to learn more about outdoor swimming