April 4th - Easter rush gets under way
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2025
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Many schools break up on Friday 4 April, and I've been looking ahead to the likely pain points on road, rail, air and ferry.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It is Friday the 4th of April, |
| 0:07.9 | which means that things are going to get quite exciting on the travel front as many schools |
| 0:14.0 | actually break up for the Easter holidays which are stretching all the way till the 22nd of April. |
| 0:21.6 | So just how miserable is it going to be for travellers? |
| 0:25.6 | On the roads, the worst problems are probably going to be on Friday the 4th and Saturday the 5th of April |
| 0:32.6 | as everyone makes the great getaway. I can predict that you will have problems on the M25 and that's going to be |
| 0:40.0 | particularly difficult on the western section around Heathrow, the M40 and the M4, right around |
| 0:47.2 | to the Gatwick turn off the M23 and on the eastern section around the Dartford crossing. Going west from London, then the A303 towards Devon and Cornwall |
| 0:59.6 | is going to be very busy going through Wiltshire, |
| 1:02.8 | as is the M5 coming south from Birmingham to Bristol and to Exeter. |
| 1:08.6 | Going north on the M6 from Birmingham, you can expect congestion at multiple |
| 1:13.7 | locations, but in particular Preston, where the M61 joins and the M55 for Blackpool |
| 1:20.9 | Neves, and then a little bit further north the turnoffs for the Lake District. You might be thinking, oh, we'll forget the car, we'll go by train. |
| 1:31.1 | Unfortunately, the West Coastman with the West Midlands, Northwest England, North Wales and Southern Scotland |
| 1:37.4 | is going to be in all kinds of disarray over the Easter weekend, and that is for planned |
| 1:43.4 | network rail engineering work. |
| 1:46.0 | In particular, London, Houston is closed all the way through from Easter Saturday to Easter Monday. |
| 1:54.0 | There will be a bus link to and from Bedford Station which is on the Thameslink and East Midlands Line, but it's going to be |
| 2:01.8 | pretty miserable. And if you're going to Scotland, well, good luck with that on the West Coast |
| 2:07.4 | main line. It's going to be closed from Carlisle in northward. Elsewhere, looking at the lines from |
| 2:14.9 | Victoria in London, going south-east to Kent. That's completely close to, and in |
| 2:21.7 | particular you're going to have to switch possibly to Cannon Street or London Bridge. And unfortunately |
... |
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