LONDON: The millions of people embarking on the great Christmas getaway today and tomorrow will have to contend with the threat of more rain and flooding, which could bring further disruption and delays to the roads and railways.
The exodus from Heathrow will be at its greatest, with 123,000 passengers set to depart from the west London airport, which will handle a further 114,000 departures on Sunday and 88,000 on Christmas Eve.
But there are delays of up to an hour on First Great Western trains between London Paddington and Reading and Heathrow because of a signalling problem, and Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect services are currently suspended.
The busiest roads this weekend are likely to be the M25, the M6 in the West Midlands, the M1 near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, the M5 near Bristol and the M62 near Warrington in Cheshire.
The Highways Agency said roadworks were still under way on the M4 between junctions 10 and 11 at Reading, on the M25 at junctions five and six near Godstone in Surrey and on the M5 between junctions 19 and 21 near Bristol.
The AA, which predicts Friday and Saturday will be the busiest days for motorists, is warning drivers against using flooded roads, having attended more than 320 breakdowns on Thursday as vehicles got stuck in water.
A number of rail services have been cancelled because of flooding.
Trains were cancelled between Ellesmere Port and Hooton near Chester until further notice, with a replacement bus service running. Trains between Crewe and Chester were also cancelled because of flooding, while trains between Chester and Wrexham General were delayed by up to 25 minutes.
There were delays of up to 20 minutes between Darlington and Newcastle, while a landslip in Stirling, central Scotland, meant buses were replacing trains between Bridge of Orchy and Crianlarich.
Floods near Uttoxeter and Stoke-on-Trent also caused rail disruptions, with a replacement bus service, while there were delays between Derby and Nottingham and East Midlands Parkway.
Services between Liskeard and Looe in Cornwall were also affected, with replacement bus services adding 30 minutes to journey times.
The Environment Agency said nearly 400 flood alerts and warnings were in place, including 91 more serious flood warnings, focused on the south-west, east Anglia, the Midlands and the north-east.
The river Ouse in York was rising steadily, while the nearby river Ure was also being monitored by Environment Agency staff. In Dorset the river Stour was rising and threatening farmland near Bournemouth.
Heavy rain swept England and Wales on Thursday, leaving residents on tenterhooks as river levels rose.
But while large swaths of the country were on alert, there was no repeat of last month’s flooding that caused widespread devastation.
– Guardian News and Media 2012
