A traditional Easter holiday mixture of traffic jams, rail disruption and unsettled weather is forecast for the long weekend with an estimated 18.6m motorists using Britain's roads.
Although motorways and other main routes are always busy for the Thursday getaway, the RAC also warns of a "manic Monday" as families head home for the new school term at many schools the following day.
More than 300 miles of road works, including long stretches on the M6 and M4, will be completed or suspended according to the Highways Agency in England. There will be extra long distance coaches as engineering work around four of London's main stations, Southampton Central and Sheffield causes cancellations, restricted services and timetable changes.
Road and rail bosses claim they are combining investment with less disruption.
While 3.4m people are taking an Easter break of at least one night's stay in the UK and 6.5m planning a day trip over Easter, according to Visit England, another 1.6m Britons are heading abroad, said travel organisation Abta, helping to fulfil another holiday tradition – a pre-weekend welter of statistics.
As to the holiday weather, Tom Tobler, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, said: "On Friday it will be generally fine, though it will be feeling cooler than it has been, and Saturday will be a similar story, so the start of the Easter weekend is looking pretty good.
"However the picture changes on Sunday, when an easterly wind is expected to bring some potentially heavy rain across much of the country. There will be some rain around on Easter Monday as well, but Sunday is expected to be the worse of the two days."
The Met Office warns this may herald a longer period of unsettled weather, possibly lasting to the end of the month.
The Highways Agency's director of traffic management Simon Sheldon-Wilson said people would be able to travel more freely this weekend. "We are investing record amounts in improvements on our network and recognise there will be disruption. That is why we plan to keep that disruption to a minimum and life as many roadworks as possible at busy and peak times such as Easter."
The "vast majority of passengers" would not be hit by Easter improvements, according to the Rail Delivery Group representing train operators and Network Rail. There would 20% fewer buses used to replace trains compared with last Easter.
But with Paddington, King's Cross, London Bridge and Charing Cross among major stations affected over the weekend, National Express is preparing to lay on extra coaches, saying "tens of thousands of advance bookings" have already been made. London is the favourite destination with approximately 40,000 passengers set to descend on the capital, followed by Stansted and Heathrow airports as people jet off to foreign locations. But bookings to major centres such as Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds and Manchester are also popular.
International rail service Eurostar is set for one of its biggest weekends of the year with over 130,000 passengers expected, 15% up on last year when the holiday fell earlier. Nearly half of these will be Britons leaving for a break. Airports will be busy as usual with 370,000 passengers leaving from Heathrow, 200,000 from Gatwick, 120,000 from Stansted and 60,000 from Luton. Elsewhere, 110,000 travellers will leave Manchester, 45,000 frp, Birmingham and 23,000 from East Midlands airports. Over 100,000 will be flying from Scottish airports.
As to those staying in England, Visit England chief executive James Berresford said the holiday industry had rallied following the floods and severe weather earlier this year. It was business as usual for tourism with a full line-up of events and offers across the country.
