Holly Hamilton warns of 19 million bank holiday trips

Holly Hamilton faces a bank holiday travel squeeze as RAC data projects 19 million getaway trips across the May bank holiday four-day weekend. The forecast points to the highest concentration of domestic road travel since 2016, with the sharpest pressure expected on the M5 between Bristol and Taunton.

M5 pressure from Bristol

RAC data published in late April 2026 puts late Saturday morning, between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM, at the peak for highway congestion. The M5 motorway is the main blackspot, and hundreds of thousands of residents from metropolitan centers are expected to use it to reach Devon and Cornwall.

That traffic pattern is arriving on top of a fuel-cost squeeze. Filling a standard 55-liter family vehicle has risen by 13 British Pounds for petrol and 27 British Pounds for diesel compared with the same period last year, and 6 percent of drivers who said they would not travel cited surging pump prices as the main reason.

York to Darlington closure

Network Rail has scheduled extensive engineering works during the same holiday period, and the East Coast Mainline will be entirely shut down between York and Darlington for three consecutive days starting Saturday. That removes a major rail alternative just as road demand rises, pushing more people toward the highway network already expected to be busiest in a decade.

For travelers, the practical move is simple: avoid the 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM window on Saturday if possible and expect the M5 to be the slowest stretch. Hamilton’s bank holiday warning now reads less like a forecast and more like a timetable for delays.