
Always-sunny holiday destination with quiet beaches gets new three-hour easyJet flights from the UK
EASYJET has launched new flights to a holiday destination that is home to Europe's only wild monkeys.
The new flights from Birmingham Airport will connect the region to Gibraltar.
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Operating all year round, the twice-weekly service has launched on Thursdays and Sundays.
This adds to easyJet 's other flights to Gibraltar from London Gatwick, Manchester and Bristol, with 13 flights a week.
Tom Screen, Aviation Director of Birmingham Airport said last year: "easyJet has a staggering 34 routes on sale for 2025 from Birmingham Airport after only opening its base in March this year."
Gibraltar, also known as the Rock, is a British Overseas Territory to the south of Spain.
You will still need your passport to visit, but won't need a visa or anything else.
The Rock of Gibraltar is the main attraction with amazing views over the city although you can also go up by taxi or cable car.
Home to around 30,000 people, Gibraltar is also known for being the home to Europe's only wild monkeys.
The Barbary Macaques are normally only found in North Africa.
And due to its location, Gibraltar remains sunny all year round with highs of 28C in summer.
But even winter, you can expect mild weather, rarely dropping below 17C.
Escape Winter: Fly to Gran Canaria with EasyJet
Eastern Beach is where you will want to head, being the largest beach in Gibraltar.
Or head to Camp Bay, a small rocky beach which has swimming pools overlooking the beach if you're not an ocean swimmer.
And Catalan Bay is where you will find the locals, being tucked away by a tiny multi-coloured village.
One tourist wrote on Tripadvisor: "I usually don't enjoy busy beaches however the atmosphere on this little gem was great full of local families all chatting."
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Another called it a "little piece of heaven".
If you want to stay somewhere fancy, there is the five-star yacht hotel Sunborn, which is also in the UK - here is what it is like to stay onboard.
Despite being moored in the harbour, it has its own rooftop plunge pool where you can even spot bottlenose dolphins.
Flights take around three hours from the UK with easyJet fares from £26.99.
There are even plans to connect Gibraltar by underwater tunnel to both Spain and Morocco.
What is a holiday to Gibraltar like?
The Sun's Commissioning Editor Martha Cliff recently visited.
Limestone mountain the Rock of Gibraltar is the first port of call for most tourists – even me, despite my fear of monkeys and this rock being home to approximately 230 of them.
A little higher up, I'm in the Ape's Den, surrounded by macaques, so I don't need much convincing to quickly make the unexpectedly steep walk to the Windsor Suspension Bridge for astonishing views across Gib (as the locals call it).
In search of more magic, I head to Catalan Bay, a five-minute drive away on the eastern side of the Rock.
With sand imported from the Sahara Desert and colourful houses lining the Mediterranean shore, it's a far cry from the Irish bars of the main harbour.
The £51.billion route would start in Madrid, before stopping in Algeciras, Gibraltar, Tangier and ending in Casablanca.
In the mean time, here are some other new easyJet flights
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Big alloy wheels are critical to muscular modern car design so could Citroen return to the 2CV's faired-in rear wheels? We asked the brand's design director Pierre Leclercq, who pointed out historic cars' narrow tracks and inboard wheels ('great car but look at an E-type's!' he urged) are a far cry from contemporary precisely stuffed arches. 'We have them as flush as possible in today's cars and that's much better. It's super important because this gives a stance on the road,' Leclercq told us. 'Let's say we have to do CX or a GS again, we'd have to make a piece of plastic [over the rear wheel] with an offset of maybe 50mm to do [it].' Advertisement - Article continues below Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below And what's head of design Leclercq's take on the retro design trend? '[Customers like it for] reassurance. I'd like to go back to the past for some projects, it's interesting,' he explained. 'They've done a great job with the Renault 5. Do we want to do it – and as much as they do? It's a good question: why not? Why yes? There's nothing planned, really. But we don't forbid ourselves to try.' Given the Citroen 2CV's design is so of its time and would need dragging into a new millennium, do the risks outweigh the rewards? 'It's a very difficult exercise,' concedes Leclercq. 'You could do a 2CV, you could do an H-type, a CX, we could easily bring back cars from the past. But obviously, the first one coming to everyone's mind is the 2CV, asking 'when do you bring it back?' Mmmm. Let's see.' There's no doubt a team as creative as Leclercq and his designers will have sketches and probably scale models of a reborn Citroen 2CV. Renault's future 5 had already been designed and rejected by a previous management team before the current CEO Luca de Meo arrived in 2020 and green-lit the proposal. Advertisement - Article continues below Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below But the critical question is whether a new 2CV is retro or a reimagining? Citroen's product planners will be trying to estimate demand for different approaches: could a concept car be a way to test the water, we asked Koskas? 'It could be this is what we want to do,' replied the then-CEO. 'The C5 Aircross concept was a show car, which means you are very close to the series model: it's a good marketing strategy. But our next concept car will show ideas, clues, intentions, directions that will inspire the future cars, but probably means you'll never see a Citroen car like that on the road. As we did with the Citroen Oli concept in 2022.' There are many more considerations than the design. Does Citroen have the budget, design and engineering capacity, or does it need to shelve other projects to accommodate a 2CV? Where would the production car be built? And which car platform and drivetrains would it use? The original Citroen 2CV measured 3.82-metres long and stood 1.6m tall, thanks to its jacked-up height for tackling rough terrain. The new C3 hatch isn't much longer, measuring 4m and 1.57m. That suggests the C3's front-wheel-drive 'smart car' platform could provide a usable base, especially given its clever engineering would help keep costs low, as per the 2CV philosophy. Advertisement - Article continues below Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below The Stellantis Group underpinnings unlock a choice of pure electric or three-cylinder hybrid petrol power, which would be mounted transversely and drive the front wheels, like the original car. The extra cylinder and packaging a modern car's ancillaries and crash structure would make matching the Citroen 2CV's nose impossible. So could Citroen find inspiration in the reborn Renault 4, a hatchback originally launched in 1961 to steal 2CV customers with its extra speed and sophistication? Although it was 'not a very nice-looking car,' according to Renault Group design director Laurens van den Acker, who was tasked with updating it. What his team has done so effectively is take a few design cues – the rearmost trapezoidal glass panel, tail-light motif, low-set boot and the graphic of the second-generation's grille – and turn them into a cute SUV. It's a stretch, literally: the reborn 4 is almost 50cm longer than the sixties hatch. But the original 4's two-box shape lends itself to an SUV. Could Citroen do the same and reinvent the 2CV as an SUV? Maybe. But at that point is it actually a 2CV at all? The naysayers within Citroen will argue it's a moot point anyway. Because a 21st century 2CV already exists – it's the Citroen C3, Auto Express's Car of the Year 2024. Advertisement - Article continues below Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below Philosophically it meets the 2CV's brief and remains true to its forebears' values. It's affordable – with the newly announced 34kWh battery, the e-C3 will cost less than £20,000 when it comes on stream in late 2025. It's comfortable: the hydraulic bump stops give it a pillowy ride, although it will struggle to carry a basket of eggs across a ploughed field. And there's clever simplicity, such as the digital driver's binnacle situated at the top of the dash rather than an expensive head-up display projected onto the windscreen. The decision to proceed with a reborn Citroen 2CV is still to be taken. 'When you develop a car, it takes four years,' says Citroen's boss. 'You start the studies and so on, then in the middle you sign a contract when the car is decided, and this is when you can probably start to communicate about the car. We are not at that stage yet.' He agrees the 2CV and new C3 share a philosophy. 'When we talk about daring, comfort, simplicity, affordability, [the C3] is very much in line with what Citroen was in the past,' says Thierry Koskas. But he'll be the first to tell you that today's Citroens are also built on sustainability and daring. The MINI, Fiat 500 and Renault 5 have paved the way. Nothing would be more daring than bringing back the 2CV. Does Citroen dare? And can it possibly win? Over to you, new CEO Xavier Chardon. Are there any classic cars you would like to see receive a modern-day remake? Let us know in the comments section below... 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