Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It is Friday the 2nd of May,

which means it's a bank holiday weekend, which with a certain inevitability means travel chaos.

Let me just tell you what LN-E-R, the main operator on the flagship East Coast mainline is saying,

we strongly advise you to avoid travelling if you can.

Things are apparently improving after a broken rail between York and Doncaster,

but it still gets things off to a very messy start.

There is going to be more disruption for rail

passengers on a range of routes because of planned engineering work, including here at

Houston Station in central London. Very busy today, but that's because tomorrow there is going to be a

much reduced service, in particular

because on the West Coast mainline, going up to the West Midlands, North West England and

Southern Scotland, there are going to be lots of repair things going on at places like

Preston, Carlisle, and therefore some very long delays.

Elsewhere across London at Victoria Station, the half of the station that normally takes people on south-eastern trains to Kent, that will not be running.

There's various other London stations which these trains use and they will be mostly rerouted there.

Thank you again by road instead. Well, pick your time carefully. From about 4pm on Friday till, well,

who knows, 7pm, it's going to be really, really tough, particularly around London on the M25, usual suspect,

and southbound on the M5, generally from Birmingham and Bristol south towards Devon.

So expect long delays.

The RAC is telling me that traffic over the weekend is going to be worse between 10am and 3pm,

except on Monday when it's going to be peaked on all.m. and 3pm, except on Monday, when it's going to be

peaked on all the way through from 11 a.m to 6pm. I'd like to say you could fly all over

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