Travel warnings as UK gets moving

Britons on the move over the bank holiday weekend will have to contend with disrupted journeys, a possible strike on Eurotunnel services, and cool and showery weather.

With a series of festival and sporting events being held, it is forecast that as many as 16 million vehicles will take to the roads.

Drivers will find that a number of roadworks on England's motorways and major trunk roads will have been completed by the start of the getaway, with others being suspended over the holiday.

But more than 20 sets of works will remain in place and motoring organisations are expecting heavy traffic on routes to the coast and in areas where events are taking place, such as the Reading and Leeds music festivals.

French workers with the Channel Tunnel shuttle train company Eurotunnel are threatening a strike from tomorrow, having demanded an 8% pay rise.

Eurotunnel has suspended bookings for the Calais to Folkestone crossing on Saturday, Sunday and bank holiday Monday to safeguard journeys for those who have already booked.

The company said it still hoped to run a full service and its British staff were not involved in the dispute.

Rail travellers will have to put up with engineering work over the weekend, with buses replacing trains on some routes.

There will be 3,428 replacement buses running over the holiday weekend, compared with 3,339 last August bank holiday.

But Network Rail (NR) said 3.5% more trains would be running over this August bank holiday than operated over the same period in 2010.

NR also said that only 4.8% fewer trains would be running over the bank holiday weekend than on a typical Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Heathrow is expecting more than 852,000 passengers to journey through the west London airport between Friday and Monday.

Heathrow's most popular destinations for the weekend are New York, Dubai, Dublin, Frankfurt and Los Angeles.

Leeds Bradford Airport said around 24,000 passengers were expected to fly off for a break.

The most popular hot spots for those departing from the Yorkshire airport included the Spanish destinations of Majorca and Alicante, as well as Dublin and the Polish city of Krakow.

For those staying at home, the weather picture is fairly gloomy. MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, is forecasting rain in eastern England tomorrow and sunny spells and scattered showers elsewhere, with temperatures no higher than 18C (64F).

It will be brighter and drier over much of England on Saturday, but northern England and Scotland can expect rain, possibly heavy at times.

Scotland and northern England will bear the brunt of the bad weather on Sunday, with other areas getting sunny, breezy conditions with scattered showers.

The VisitEngland organisation said 28% of Britons were planning to take at least one overnight trip away from home over the coming fortnight, a decrease of 2% compared to the same period last year.

It added that 5% of the 1,000 people it surveyed said they planned to take a break overseas, representing a 1% drop on last year's figure.

PA