VacationSelector

Bath or Galway?

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, 1 point apart

Bath
40
match

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

Galway
39
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.

Scoreboard

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

BathGalway
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 43 points.43
BathGalway
Score851
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km113
Coast distance29 km1 km
Water distance29 km1 km
Places to eat. Bath leads by 9 points.9
BathGalway
Score4637
Restaurants within 2 km of centre245173
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2620
Museums & heritage. Bath leads by 27 points.27
BathGalway
Score4720
Museums within 10 km205
Museums within 2 km of centre145
Share of museums within 2 km %70100
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Bath leads by 10 points.10
BathGalway
Score3626
Drinking venues within 4 km320185
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre240153
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7583
Nightclubs within 4 km118
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 11 points.11
BathGalway
Score4455
Protected land share 50 km %28—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %270
Land share of disc %9285
Park area within 2 km45 hectares65 hectares
Good for families. Bath leads by 15 points.15
BathGalway
Score4025
Tourist attractions within 2 km145
Park area within 2 km45 hectares65 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Bath leads by 10 points.10
BathGalway
Score3222
Notable places within 2 km2514
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Galway leads by 3 points.3
BathGalway
Score5457
Price level global84.980.2
Daily budget—€187
Year-round weather. Bath leads by 1 points.1
BathGalway
Score5554
Monthly daytime high6.8 °C to 21.4 °C8.9 °C to 19.6 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm63 mm to 113 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Bath
8
7
7
9
12
15
18
18
17
15
12
9
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Rainfall, mm
Bath
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Daylight, hours per day
Bath
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Galway
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
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). Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBathGalway
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 132 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
DublinDUB
1 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
FaroFAO
2 h 35 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 25 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
Puerto del RosarioFUE
3 h 50 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
ReusREU
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
SNN · 64 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

MeasureBathGalway
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 m25 m
Main airportBristol Airport (BRS)25 km from centre116 non-stop destinationsShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBathGalway
City population94,09283,456
People per km²3,2451,563
Museums within 10 km174
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre3825
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 Galway 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.