Tom and I love swimming outdoors, and there’s been a lot of news in the UK about raw sewage released into waterways. Which, righly, put a lot of people off wild swimming.

You should know the water before you dive in, and Tom pointed out that the UK Environment Agency has a water quality archive where they open source regular readings of water quality all around the UK. If only this was accessible!

Swim-free is our attempt to do that.

We want Swim-free to be an easy-to-use way to check the water quality for sites in your area, or if you go somewhere new in England and want to know if there’s any risks to a wild dip. We can’t tell you if it’s safe but the data can better inform you of any risks.

This project was a challenge for me. I’m not a frontend dev and I knew absolutely no Svelte before diving in in earnest. I had a lot of fun, but I’m ready to go back to my wheelhouse of making things most people never see.