All swimming spots › South Hams, England
Can I swim at Dartmouth Castle Cove?
South Hams, England · Estuary
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Before you get in
A red flag means do not go in, whatever this page says.
If you get into trouble, float on your back until the cold shock passes. Full advice below.
In an emergency call 999 and ask for the Coastguard, or 112 in the Republic of Ireland.
Water quality today
The last fortnight
What this verdict covers
Independent site, not an official one. This verdict is about water quality. It does not tell you whether the water is safe to get into today.
How it has been rated
The annual classification for 2021 to 2025. Each one is calculated from samples taken over up to four bathing seasons, so these overlap and none of them describes today.
Every sample, 2023 to 2026
45 samples, 2023 to 2026. The highest E. coli count in them was 130 per 100ml, on 11 August 2025; the standard for Excellent is 250 or below and for Good 500 or below.
One bar for each sample, oldest on the left. The taller the bar, the more E. coli that bottle held.
The scale is the same on every beach on this site, which is why a clean beach looks flat — the bars are measured against the standard rather than against that beach’s own worst day. Hover or tap a bar for that day’s figures. A single count over a line is not a failed beach. The classification is worked out as the 90th and 95th percentile of four years of samples, so one bad morning does not decide it — and one good morning does not either.
What these bacteria mean for you
Neither one is what makes people ill by itself. They are markers: they live in the gut, so finding them means sewage or animal waste has reached the water, and whatever else came with it is likely there too.
The usual way to catch something is swallowing the water, and the usual result is a stomach upset. Ear, eye, chest and skin infections are the other common ones. Putting your head under and swimming with an open cut both raise the odds.
The riskiest time is the day or two after heavy rain, when storm overflows discharge and rain washes off farmland — including at beaches rated Excellent for the rest of the season. That is the whole reason this page shows you rainfall and discharges alongside the grade.
Dartmouth Castle Cove was rated Excellent for 2025, the highest of the four grades in the Bathing Water Regulations. That grade comes from bacterial samples taken over several seasons, so it describes the beach's record rather than the water on any given day.
The Environment Agency issues a pollution risk forecast each morning during the bathing season for nearly every bathing water in England, and the water company publishes the status of its storm overflows every few minutes.
The rest of its file
What the regulator holds for this place. None of it describes the water today.
- Water
- Estuary
- Area
- South Hams, England
- Monitored outfalls within 5km
- 13 (nearest 0.5km)
Sea, wind, tide and weather
The sea and the weather here today and for the week ahead. Not the water quality verdict above.
Today
Rain, the week behind and ahead
The weather for the week ahead
Where it is, and what discharges near it
Directions to this bathing water
That is the Environment Agency’s sampling point, which is at the water rather than at a car park. Your maps app will take you to the nearest road it can reach.
The nearest mapped car park is about 50m away in a straight line (Dartmouth Castle Parking). That is not a walking distance: OpenStreetMap knows where the car park is and nothing about the path, which may be longer, steeper or not there at all.
What is mapped at this beach
- Toilets about 70m away — free
Straight-line distances from OpenStreetMap, not walking distances, and only what volunteers have mapped — something missing here may still be there.
Getting here without a car
- Nearest bus stop Banjo (E-bound), Brixham Road, about 920m away
Straight-line distances to where the stop or station is, from the national registers of them. That a stop exists is not a promise that a bus calls at it — timetables are somebody else’s data and this page does not read them, so check the operator before you rely on it.
The record since 2024
In 2025, the 1 monitored overflow the Environment Agency lists against this bathing water spilled 46 times, for about 117 hours in total. Over the 2025 bathing season alone, 1 May to 30 September, 8 of those spills happened — 17% of the year.
- 202474 spills · 158 hours
- 202546 spills · 117 hours
These are annual totals for the whole year, not readings from today — today’s answer is the verdict at the top of the page. Figures come from the Environment Agency’s Event Duration Monitoring annual returns, which the water companies submit and the EA publishes, and the EA decides which overflows count as belonging to this bathing water.
What the regulator says about this beach
From the Environment Agency’s published bathing water profile for 2026. It describes the place and its catchment, not today’s water.
The beach itself
Dartmouth Castle Cove is at the mouth of the River Dart on the south coast of Devon. It is a sand and shingle beach, approximately 60 metres wide, backed by cliffs.
What drains into it
The catchment surrounding Dartmouth Castle Cove is approximately 48,000 hectares. There are no streams entering the sea at Sugary Cove, however, the beach is at the mouth of the Dart Estuary. The River Dart rises on north Dartmoor and is approximately 28 kilometres long. It flows through Dartmeet, Buckfastleigh, Totnes, and Dartmouth and Kingswear at the estuary mouth. The Dart Estuary is tidal to the weir at Totnes, and like most other estuaries of the South West, it was formed by the original deep river valley being flooded by sea level rise. This created the characteristic deep waters and steep sided banks of a ria. The main tributaries which feed the estuary are the rivers Hems and Harbourne. The catchment is mostly for agriculture and tourism.
More from the profile
What has been done about it
South West Water provided preliminary treatment (screening) to the majority of the sewage from Dartmouth and Kingswear in 1997. A small untreated discharge at Dartmouth Castle was also replaced by an emergency overflow from a pumping station at that time. The South West Water sewage treatment scheme for Dartmouth and Kingswear, which provides secondary treatment and ultraviolet (UV) disinfection, was completed in 2002. The storm overflow at New Ground Dartmouth (also referred to as Mayors Avenue) was improved in September 2002, and the sewerage infrastructure in the Warfleet/Southtown area was also improved at that time. The sewage treatment works (STW) at Galmpton received secondary treatment and UV disinfection by the end of December 2002, and improvements to the combined sewer overflow at the STW were also completed. Improvements to discharges in the Dart Estuary at Dittisham and Stoke Gabriel were completed by March 2003. Sewage from Galmpton and Stoke Gabriel is pumped to the Brokenbury Quarry STW for treatment and discharges through the outfall at Sharkham Point. Storm overflow event duration monitoring (EDM) was installed at Mayors Avenue by December 2011, and saline balancing was also reinstated at this site in 2015. The following emergency/storm discharges into the Dart have also been improved to protect shellfish waters: Galmpton pumping station, Mill Creek pumping station, Dittisham STW and Ferry Boat Inn pumping station by 2018.
What the samplers see on the sand
Environment Agency samplers make observations of litter present on the beach at every visit, this includes assessments of sewage debris, litter and tar. At Dartmouth Castle Cove for the four year (2022-2025) assessment period where data is available, sewage debris was not noted at this site. Litter was not assessed as being sufficient to be objectionable, but was observed as being present on 20% of visits. Tarry residue was not noted at this site.
Published by the Environment Agency under the Open Government Licence. The full profile carries more, including sections repeated for every beach that are not reproduced here.
Other swimming spots nearby
The closest bathing waters on the regulators’ lists, straight-line distance. Each has its own checks and its own verdict.
Check the official source
The regulator’s own page for this bathing water. If it disagrees with this one, believe theirs.
Dartmouth Castle Cove's official page at the Environment Agency · See it on a map
This page is not official. It reads published data and presents it plainly; if a sign at the beach says otherwise, believe the sign.
If you get into trouble
This is the RNLI’s advice, not ours.
Float. Tilt your head back with your ears in the water. Relax and let your breathing settle. Move your hands and legs gently to stay level. Your legs may sink, and that is fine, everyone floats differently. The first shock of cold water passes in less than a minute, so do not try to swim straight away. Once it has passed, call for help or swim to safety.
Caught in a rip current? Do not swim against it, you will only tire yourself out. If you can stand, wade out of it. If the water is too deep to stand, swim parallel to the beach until you are clear of it, then head for shore. Raise your hand and shout for help.
Nobody publishes a rip current forecast for beaches in Britain or Ireland, so this site cannot show you one. The RNLI has one for its own lifeguards. The public does not. Look at the water before you get in, and look for a channel where the waves are not breaking.
In an emergency call 999 and ask for the Coastguard. In the Republic of Ireland call 112 or 999 and ask for the Coast Guard.
Where there are lifeguards, swim between the red and yellow flags. They put those flags where it is safest that day and move them as the sea changes. A red flag means do not go in, whatever this page says. An orange windsock means the wind is blowing offshore and inflatables should stay out of the water. Most places on this site have no lifeguard at all.
This advice is the RNLI’s. Their Float to Live pages are worth two minutes of anyone’s time.
Use this page elsewhere
One sheet of A4 with a QR code to this page, for a clubhouse, a campsite reception, a surf school or a harbour office. The address is printed underneath in words, so it still works for anybody who would rather not scan a code.
Print a sign for Dartmouth Castle CoveOr put today’s verdict on your own site.
Put this beach on your own site
A small card showing today’s verdict for Dartmouth Castle Cove, updating itself. Paste this where you want it to appear. It loads nothing of yours and sets no cookies, and it costs your visitors about ten kilobytes, most of it the readings themselves.
Click the box to select it all. There is also a feed for this beach, if you would rather be told than have to look.