VacationSelector

Bath or Cork?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Bath
40
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Cork
38
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Bath if the trip is built around museums and heritage on foot: roughly twice as many museums as Cork, 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and its notable sights packed close to the centre.

Choose Cork if you want the coast within reach of the city, 3km from the centre rather than 29km, and a slightly wider range of kitchens for eating out.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BathCork
Beaches & swimming. Cork leads by 20 points.20
BathCork
Score828
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance29 km3 km
Water distance29 km3 km
Places to eat. Cork leads by 4 points.4
BathCork
Score4650
Restaurants within 2 km of centre245224
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2635
Museums & heritage. Bath leads by 24 points.24
BathCork
Score4723
Museums within 10 km2010
Museums within 2 km of centre148
Share of museums within 2 km %7080
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Cork leads by 2 points.2
BathCork
Score3638
Drinking venues within 4 km320361
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre240292
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7581
Nightclubs within 4 km119
Nature & day trips. Cork leads by 8 points.8
BathCork
Score4452
Protected land share 50 km %28—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %270
Land share of disc %9274
Park area within 2 km45 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Bath leads by 13 points.13
BathCork
Score4027
Tourist attractions within 2 km147
Park area within 2 km45 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Bath leads by 10 points.10
BathCork
Score3222
Notable places within 2 km2514
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cork leads by 3 points.3
BathCork
Score5457
Price level global84.980.2
Daily budget—€187
Year-round weather. Bath leads by 6 points.6
BathCork
Score5549
Monthly daytime high6.8 °C to 21.4 °C8.3 °C to 18.6 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm78 mm to 140 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Bath is the stronger choice for indoor history: about twice as many museums as Cork, and 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Cork has none. It also has about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre and 1 theme park within reach, which counts with children along.

Cork's advantage is the coast. The sea sits 3km from the centre against 29km from Bath, so a coastal afternoon needs no excursion. Both have 1 beach nearby, and Cork's day trips into the countryside are a little stronger.

Where they are alike

Nightlife is where they are most alike. Each has a comparable number of places to drink, most of them near the centre, so an evening out is walkable; Bath has somewhat more nightclubs.

They also match on eating and open space: a similar number of restaurants near the centre, though Cork's kitchens span a wider range, and much the same park space. Weather is close, 7-21°C at Bath against 8-19°C at Cork, with no month at 40mm or less.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller who plans days around museums and old streets should take Bath: twice the museums, 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and the notable sights concentrated tightly enough to cover on foot.

Families are better served in Bath too, with about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, 1 theme park within reach, and park space in the city itself for the gaps between them.

Anyone whose week runs on coastal walks and eating out should pick Cork: the sea 3km from the centre, stronger countryside day trips, and a wider spread of kitchens for evenings.

What the numbers don't tell you

There is no daily cost figure for Bath in this data, so the two cannot be compared on price at all. Cork's €187 a day stands on its own and says nothing about whether Bath is dearer or cheaper; the value ratings here rest on a different measure that both cities have.

Cork's short 3km run to the sea is about access, not swimming: the water peaks at 16°C in August, and neither city has a month warm enough for easy sea swimming. Bath's warmer, drier profile is relative, not absolute; every month in both places brings substantial rain.

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Bath
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
21
18
14
10
7
Cork
8
9
10
12
15
17
19
19
17
13
10
9
Sea temperature, °C
Bath
8
7
7
9
12
15
18
18
17
15
12
9
Cork
10
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
14
12
11
Rainfall, mm
Bath
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Cork
132
100
92
85
78
88
86
98
91
140
125
134
Daylight, hours per day
Bath
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Cork
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bath
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Cork
2
2
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bath: 1991-2020 normals, Lyneham (29.2 km from centre). Cork: 1991-2020 normals, Cork Airport (5.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bath is at its best from May to September, when highs climb through 16-21°C and rainfall stays near 54-66mm. October and November are the wettest, at 83-87mm. That is the window for walking between sights without needing shelter.

Cork's summer is cooler and wetter: July and August reach 19°C with 86-98mm of rain, and its driest stretch, April to June, still runs 78-88mm. From October to January it takes 125-140mm, so winter is largely indoors.

Getting there

Flying fromBathCork
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 15 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
FaroFAO
2 h 35 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 132 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 94 km
DublinDUB
1 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 78 km
ManchesterMAN
55 m
no fares
LHR · 132 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 25 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureBathCork
Official languageEnglishEnglish, Irish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation132 m0 m
Main airportBristol Airport (BRS)25 km from centre116 non-stop destinationsCork International Airport (ORK)7 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBathCork
City population94,092222,333
People per km²3,2455,961
Museums within 10 km175
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre3849
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bath or Cork somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.