Bank holiday travellers face delays

Aug 29 2009

Travellers heading off to enjoy a sunshine-and-showers bank holiday weekend will have to contend with busy roads and disrupted rail services.

Motoring groups warned that major routes would remain busy over the weekend, while train travellers were having to cope with a number of rail engineering works, including 42 on Saturday alone.

Journeys were hampered on Friday by a series of accidents on major roads.

One of the most disruptive hold-ups was on the M25 in Surrey, which delayed Gatwick airport-bound holidaymakers who were among the 1.9 million Britons flying abroad over the weekend.

Thousands of motorists were trapped for more than six hours in their cars after the northbound carriageway of the M5 was closed while police negotiated with a suicidal man on the Avonmouth bridge.

Another serious accident led to the westbound closure of a section of the M58 near Skelmersdale in Lancashire.

And two lanes of the M62 were closed in Greater Manchester, while there was also heavy traffic reported on the northern part of the M25, the A303 near Stonehenge in Wiltshire, the M23 in Surrey and the M4 in Berkshire.

With forecasters predicting that temperatures could reach 25C (77F) in London on Bank Holiday Monday, many people headed for the numerous music festivals taking place over the weekend, including the popular Reading festival in Berkshire.

Rail engineering works are resulting in a number of trains being replaced by buses, although train companies are operating 3,500 more trains than last August Bank Holiday, as well as replacing 15% fewer train services with bus services.

MeteoGroup, the Press Association's weather division, said the windy conditions would continue on Saturday, with England being mainly dry and sunny and Scotland and Wales getting showers. Sunday is expected to be increasingly cloudy across the UK with outbreaks of rain and drizzle. The clouds should break across England on Monday, leaving warm spells of sunshine.