logo
The safest country for families this summer has 29C highs – and it's one of the cheapest with beers costing £2.25

The safest country for families this summer has 29C highs – and it's one of the cheapest with beers costing £2.25

The Suna day ago
A TINY and landlocked country in Europe has been called the safest place for travellers in the world.
Andorra is wedged between France and Spain, and research has revealed that it's got a very low crime rate particularly compared to its neighbours - and it's very affordable too.
6
6
Safety is a big factor for families when it comes to booking a holiday and Andorra is the safest.
Home security provider ADT has analysed data including overall crime rates and fear of being robbed to calculate the safest and riskiest countries for tourists to visit this summer.
The tiny Spanish-speaking country of Andorra tops the list of being the safest with a score of 90 out of 100.
According to ADT Andorra has an "impressively low crime index rate" with few visitors and residents reporting few concerns about personal safety."
Despite its low crime rate Andorra is much less popular than its neighbours France and Spain.
Andorra attracts just 150,000 British tourists each year, which is over 100 times fewer than its neighbour Spain, which has 18.8 million.
It's a sunny destination too with highs of 29C in the summer and a daily average of 24C - which is a good exploring temperature.
And there is plenty to see in the country that's 468 square kilometres, from enormous mountains to beautiful lakes in the national parks.
There's also an outdoor amusement park called Naturland which is home to the longest alpine slide in the world called the Tobotronc.
Sitting on a toboggan, riders go down the slide that descends through the Andorran forest - and goes on for over three miles.
Inside Europe's highest capital city with no airports or train stations - but welcomes EIGHT MILLION tourists a year
6
6
To ride the longest toboggan ride in Andorra costs around €10 (£8.63).
The park also has the longest sky trail in Europe, a 170 metre zipline and a giant trampoline.
In Andorra, you get a lot for your money too, the average cost for a local beer is €2.60 (£2.24).
A three-course meal at a mid-range restaurant for two people costs around €44 (£37.98).
If you want a drink, the average price for a glass of wine costs around €6 (£5.18).
When it comes to the country's food specialities, there are plenty like Escudella which is a flavourful stew.
There's also trinxat made from cabbage and potato, and Crema Andorrana which is a creamy custard dessert with brandy.
The price of a hotel room varies but can be as cheap as €17 (£14.68).
At a mid-range hotel, prices range from €56 (£48.35) to €96 (£82.89).
6
Andorra is a good winter spot too and offers a cheap ski season between early December and late April.
In Grandvalira Ski Resort, considered one of the best in Andorra, you can expect to pay €40-60 (£34.53-£51.79) for a day pass during peak season.
At one of the cheapest resorts in France, Les Gets, a pass can cost €48 (£41.44), but expensive resort in France like Val d'Isère in France can be from €71 (£61.30) per day.
Currently, to get to Andorra, visitors from the UK will have to fly to Barcelona.
From there, you'll then hop on a bus from the airport which goes directly to Andorra and takes around two hours.
The cheapest flights to Barcelona are in November 2025 with a starting price of £15.
The Andorra direct bus runs 16 daily services between Barcelona Airport and Andorra la Vella - the journey costs €35 (£30.21).
And this small country that's just a few hours from the UK was previously named the 'safest in the world'.
6
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Seeking growth, Britain considers rival Heathrow expansion plans
Seeking growth, Britain considers rival Heathrow expansion plans

Reuters

time39 minutes ago

  • Reuters

Seeking growth, Britain considers rival Heathrow expansion plans

LONDON, July 31 (Reuters) - Britain's government will consider two competing, multi-billion-pound plans to build a runway to increase capacity at the country's biggest airport Heathrow that it hopes will kickstart economic growth. Finance minister Rachel Reeves in January gave her backing to Heathrow expansion as she sought to end decades of indecision due to environmental concerns. The government has said airlines' increased use of sustainable aviation fuel means airport enlargements do not necessarily derail net zero targets. Located west of London, Heathrow is Europe's busiest hub and operates at full capacity, putting a brake on Britain's economy. Its two runways compare with four each in Paris' Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt Airport, and six at Amsterdam's Schiphol. Heathrow Airport submitted a proposal for a new runway to the government on Thursday with an estimated total price tag of 49 billion pounds ($65 billion), which it said would be privately-financed. The Arora Group, which owns land and hotels around Heathrow, said its plan for a new runway would cost under 25 billion pounds but that does not include all the development costs. Under Heathrow's plan, the runway and airfield infrastructure would cost 21 billion pounds, with the balance funding a new terminal, modernising existing infrastructure and moving a motorway. As well as a new runway at Heathrow, the government will by October 27 make a final decision on whether to expand Gatwick, the country's second largest airport, after saying it was inclined to do so in February. At Heathrow, both projects aim for the new runway to be operational by 2035. The Heathrow plan includes a full-length, 3,500-metre (11,483 ft) runway and building a tunnel to move a section of London's M25 motorway. Arora's plan is to build a slightly shorter runway without moving the motorway, but at 2,800 metres in length, it would be unable to accommodate the biggest widebody jets. Airlines, such as British Airways-owner IAG (ICAG.L), opens new tab, have long complained that Heathrow is one of the most expensive airports in the world in terms of its charges, and they have been worried expansion will mean higher fees. An IAG spokesperson said it backed a shorter runway. "Avoiding the need to cross the M25 would remove complexity, reduce costs and help deliver better value for passengers," the spokesperson said. The submissions now be reviewed by the government over the summer, the Department for Transport said. ($1 = 0.7551 pounds)

Air traffic control encourages working from home to reach net zero
Air traffic control encourages working from home to reach net zero

Telegraph

timean hour ago

  • Telegraph

Air traffic control encourages working from home to reach net zero

The air traffic control company responsible for Britain's skies embraced home working in a drive to 'go green', The Telegraph can disclose. Many staff at National Air Traffic Services (Nats) have been allowed to work remotely after managers decided it would help the organisation reduce its carbon footprint and cut car journeys to reach net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2035. The 'agile working' policy does not include air traffic controllers themselves, as those people all still work inside secure control centres. However, it extends up to board level including chief executive Martin Rolfe, and also allows some operations staff to work from home. They are allowed to do so despite Nats being criticised for an air traffic control meltdown in 2023, which lasted for four hours in part because an on-call engineer who could have fixed a malfunctioning computer system was working from home and unable to gain full access. A subsequent failure for around half an hour on Wednesday triggered more than 150 cancellations and disrupted tens of thousands of holidaymakers. Nats has repeatedly said that agile working is crucial to help its green ambitions. In a responsible business report from 2021, published as the country recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic, a senior manager described how agile working would help Nats go green. 'The need to reduce our environmental impacts and costs was firmly part of our plans prior to Covid,' he said. 'Now the pandemic has hastened discussions on the amount and type of property and accommodation the business will need in the future, particularly in the context of agile working, which will allow Nats to make better use of people and space. 'A more permanent element of remote working also potentially supports a reduction in car journeys. Creating a new, agile-ready office work environment offers the opportunity to 'go green', and we're encouraging employees to make the most of the 'new office and new start' post-Covid.' Current job vacancies which allow remote working include a military air traffic control specialist, a post described as playing a 'key role within the operations transformation department' and responsibility for overseeing the implementation of a military radar contract. Others include a senior project manager in charge of 'multiple complex and major projects' and a tactical training planner whose roles include ensuring that 'competency is maintained'. In another report in July 2023, shortly before the August bank holiday air traffic chaos of that year, Nats unveiled a five-year plan titled 'our route towards carbon negative'. As part of its plan to reduce emissions 'on the ground' it said that it would reduce 'consumption and improve energy efficiency, reduce unnecessary business and commuting travel emissions, adopt agile working'. It boasted of a 6 per cent reduction in its 'commuting footprint' and said that by not returning all of its staff to the office, it had reduced carbon dioxide emissions. The air traffic control company won a 'climate leaders' award the following year for achieving the highest score in a survey that asked stock market-listed companies how they were reducing emissions. Solar panels Part of that work included installing more than 2,600 solar panels on the roof of Nats' Swanwick air traffic control centre, which was completed a year ago. Bosses hope that the panels will eventually provide up to a fifth of the centre's electricity needs, even though the technology only generates power when the sun is shining. 'This project is the first of three large-scale solar installations at Nats' sites involving some 12,000 panels,' Nats said in a statement about the Swanwick works issued last July. 'Work is underway to fit solar panels to the roof of the Prestwick Centre in Ayrshire and ground-mounted panels will be installed on adjoining land later this year,' it added. Prestwick is the headquarters of Scottish Control, which is in charge of the skies over the northern UK mainland and Northern Ireland. It also hosts Shanwick Oceanic Control, which is responsible for all flights to and from the US that pass over the eastern half of the North Atlantic. However, reliance on solar panels has previously been blamed for blackouts such as those seen in Spain and Portugal earlier this year. In April the solar-dependent Spanish electricity grid became unstable thanks to the large amount of intermittent renewable power connected to it, eventually triggering a total loss of electricity across the entire Iberian peninsula. Fears of aviation meltdowns because of unreliable power supplies came true earlier this year when Heathrow Airport was forced to close after a site-wide power cut that disrupted 700,000 airline passengers around the world. That incident was eventually traced back to the failure of a single National Grid transformer with a fault that had been known about for years. Diversity hiring A focus on air traffic diversity hiring was also criticised by Donald Trump earlier this year after a deadly crash between a military helicopter and passenger plane that killed 67 people in Washington DC. The US president said that employees with 'severe disabilities' had been hired as part of a diversity and inclusion drive and vowed to 'put safety first'. A Nats spokesman said on Thursday: 'Yesterday's issue was radar related and was resolved quickly by switching to the back-up system during which time we reduced traffic to ensure safety. There is no evidence that this was cyber related. 'Regarding our working policies, we adopted 'agile working' in 2020, post-pandemic for appropriate roles. It does not include frontline staff such as controllers and engineers based in our centres.'

BBC broke TV's golden rule with much-hyped Destination X – a lost cause that feels like Hezbollah hijacked Coach Trip
BBC broke TV's golden rule with much-hyped Destination X – a lost cause that feels like Hezbollah hijacked Coach Trip

The Sun

time2 hours ago

  • The Sun

BBC broke TV's golden rule with much-hyped Destination X – a lost cause that feels like Hezbollah hijacked Coach Trip

SOMETHING odd happened about halfway through episode one of BBC1's heavily trailed new reality show, Destination X. One of the contestants, Mahdi, simply got up and left. 6 He wasn't angry, or upset, let alone put off by the fact, 30 minutes earlier, he'd told everyone: 'I come from ­Tottenham, da trenches. You know what I'm sayin'.' He just seemed a bit bored. And you know what? I couldn't entirely blame Mahdi. Both of us had probably seen enough, by then, to know we were on to a loser with Destination X, which sees the BBC breaking one of television's golden rules: If you've got a hit as big as The Traitors or Race Across The World, you leave it well alone. Let ITV and Netflix tie themselves in knots with hopeless rip-offs like The Genius Game, Hotel Fortune and Million Dollar Secret. The very last thing you should do, in the Beeb's ­position, of course, is weld those two famously successful formats together in one pan-European charabanc, with a 'games-master, guide and guru' who looks like he's been styled by Basil Brush. No prizes for guessing then exactly what they've done with Destination X, hosted by the unfortunate Rob Brydon who takes an eternity to explain what's going on to the 13 contestants at Baden Baden airport, inauspicious starting point for both this 'magical mystery tour' and England's bid to win the 2006 World Cup. The nuts of it is, though, a 'guess where the f*** you are in Europe?' contest, with the furthest away contestant being eliminated at the end of each show. Low-level cunning An idea that probably sounded great at the first meeting. The practical issue here, though, is one road sign or chance encounter with a local could blow the entire project out of the water. And so, apart from the brief moments when the contestants are allowed to gawp at a ­location clue, via an electronically controlled blindfold called the X Goggles, they're just thundering around the continent in two blacked-out coaches, staring at nothing more scenic than each other. Result? Not only does the show look more like Channel 4's Coach Trip has been hijacked by Hezbollah, during the Beirut leg, it sounds like it as well — especially when Ben and ­Saskia are left discussing on- board bathroom arrangements. 'I think we have to make a rule. Everyone has to sit down when they go to the toilet.' 'As opposed to what?' If, from that question, you've guessed it's not exactly the Brains Trust BBC1 has assembled here, then I should point out they seem to be a pleasant bunch with a relaxed, happy-go-lucky attitude to life. What they don't appear to have is a second language between them. Nor do they even possess the sort of low-level cunning that would realise, given the BBC is the most snootily middle-class institution in Britain, that Benidorm, ­Torremolinos, Hamburg's Reeperbahn or anywhere else serviced by EasyJet is ­probably off limits, but they'll be all over France and Italy like scatter cushions in an Islington townhouse. 6 If this process wasn't already disorientating enough, a whole new level of confusion is added by the clues, which are either so vague as to be pointless — 'This was one of the first places in the world to adopt street lighting' (relax, you're not in Tower Hamlets) — or they're questions which offer only two possible responses: 'How many times did Taylor Swift perform her Eras tour in the country you are now in?' A) Don't know. B) Don't care. Ungrateful gesture Occasionally, Rob will also offer to show one of them something 'at the back of the bus', and they can either tell another contestant or BBC1's head of HR, which seems to have been Mahdi's cue for making his excuses and ­leaving. A spectacularly ungrateful gesture from the lad, no matter how bored he got, if I'm ­honest. The one person I do actually feel sorry for, though, is Rob Brydon, a huge talent who's one of the very few people left on television capable of transforming a format and making you believe the medium is still some sort of meritocracy. The show may gather some momentum as it ­proceeds, obviously, but the only real comfort I've got for him at the moment is that Destination X could still make for one hell of a celebrity spin-off, with Terry Waite. Ella is having a giraffe 6 BBC2'S grand new anthropology series Human marks ground-breaking territory for television. The first time the entire history of mankind has been told via the medium of bucket list holiday ­locations. You can only marvel then at the luck of presenter Ella Al- Shamahi who starts this series, like mankind itself, in east Africa, where the scale of our development and migration cannot be fully understood unless you go on a safari and stare at some giraffes, apparently. From there, Ella wafts her way round the globe via a waterfall in Sri Lanka, Morocco, Botswana, France's Rhone Valley, the Alps and a beach on the paradise island of Flores, in Indonesia, where our ancestors may (or may not) have first set off for Australia. Because these great milestones in evolution never seem to take place behind a ­shopping precinct in Grimsby, do they? Whatever exotic resort Ella wafts into, though, someone else has done the leg work for her already. In Flores it's Dr Thomas Sutikna, who discovered the 70,000-year-old skeleton of 'an adult woman, the size of a child, with a very small brain', yet somehow resisted the temptation to name her Homo Jimmykrankieus. For all the BBC's breathtaking ­ extravagance, though, the most annoying thing about Human is the underlying political agenda of Ella, who was gazing into some beautiful European mountain valley, this week, wondering if the first homo sapiens to leave Africa, thousands of years ago, were driven by 'the same forces that drive migrants today?' A four-star hotel, Universal Credit and an Uber Eats bike? It seems unlikely, Ella. So just crack on with your gap year and spare us the ­lecture. Random irritations CHANNEL 4 giving the cold, dead eyes of Bonnie Blue the oxygen of publicity. Any show involving a QR code. Mastermind featuring the most clumsily worded ­questions on television. And a single caption on Good Morning Britain probably ­revealing exactly how much of a toss its rictus-grinning presenters and a lot of other people really gave about 'our Lionesses' at 8.21 on Monday morning. It's spelt Wiegman, not 'Weigman'. Lookalike of the week 6 THIS week's winner is Attorney General Lord Hermer, the right-on cretin who helped land Britain with a multi-billion- pound bill for handing the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, and Corrie's Norris Cole. Emailed in by Steve Davis. EXCUSE of the week? Nigerian-born Ade Adepitan explaining his reluctance to get in the water on ITV Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters: 'When black people were taken as slaves from Africa to the Caribbean and the West, they were taken on boats and they saw people die on those boats. They saw people thrown into the ocean and they saw the ocean as a bridge taking them to hell. 'This trauma goes on through generations from family after family after family. 'It's stayed with us and we have to overcome it.' Which reminds me. Due to the Highland Clearances of 1750 to 1860, I am unable to review episode four, series 22, of Escape To The ­Country (Perth and Kinross). It's just too raw. LORRAINE, Tuesday, Nicola Thorp: 'What does it say to women that our PM is going to meet Donald Trump, considering what he thinks of women, rather than meet the Lionesses?' It probably says ending the war in Ukraine, signing ­international trade agreements and establishing a ceasefire in Gaza are a bit more important than a ball-kicking contest. Unless they're all as ­imperiously thick as yourself, Nicola. Hull and Hornsea, the suspect's quite prolific, so we need to get a grip of it.' I wouldn't.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store