The Lyon metropolitan area wants to open swimming areas in the Rhône and Saône rivers

Swimming in the Saône or the Rhône? It will soon be possible, promised with undisguised pleasure the ecologist elected officials of the metropolis and the city of Lyon on Tuesday, May 6, not unhappy to catch up with Paris, where the first swimming sites in the Seine are due to open this summer. Bruno Bernard, president of France's second largest metropolis, and Grégory Doucet, mayor of Lyon, announced the creation of a swimming site in the waters of the Saône in Lyon by the summer of 2027, as well as the selection of twenty other potential swimming sites in the beds of the Rhône and the Saône, mainly upstream of the capital of the Gauls. Fourteen of these sites concern the Rhône, the others the Saône. They are spread over approximately 80 kilometers, from the commune of Givors in the south, to that of Neuville-sur-Saône in the north.

These whitewater swimming projects, in a region irrigated by the two rivers, are the result of a study conducted by the Lyon metropolitan area as part of a river bank usage plan. The study considered several criteria: water quality, accessibility, current strength, compatibility of uses, and bathymetry (bank depth). This was done to identify locations likely to accommodate the public in satisfactory hygiene and safety conditions.

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