It will probably come as no surprise to anyone who has swum in the Croatian Adriatic Sea that the waters are some of the cleanest in the world. And now that has been confirmed by an official report by the European Environment Agency released this week, with Croatian waters coming top of the quality list.

This survey of the waters of Europe has been produced for the past two centuries and Croatia has always ranked highly. The latest findings put Croatia in fourth place in Europe with a quality ranking of 94.2 percent. Cyprus, with 99.1 percent, came in at the number one spot, followed by Malta with 97.7 percent and Greece with 97.2 percent.

In total over 21,000 swimming spots all over Europe had the quality of their water checked, the survey was looking for bacteria and pollutants, in Croatia almost 600 beaches were checked.

Near the bottom of the list were Italy, France and Spain, three classical European holiday destinations.