Parts of Britain will be blessed by warm and clement weather over the Bank Holiday weekend, but seeking it out will be as stressful as ever. Engineering works are planned on vast stretches of railway and 18 million motorists are expected to clog up the the roads.

The Met Office has forecast that temperatures will rise in some parts to 22C (72F) as the sun manages to break through a band of cloud sweeping across the country.

According to the RAC, congestion on the roads will be worst around out-of-town DIY and furniture stores. Of those staying at home, 86 per cent are expected to take advantage of the long weekend to go shopping for home improvements.

The RAC predicts that areas affected will include the A23 Purley Way, Croydon, South London; A406 North Circular at Brent Cross, North London; A406 North Circular at Edmonton, North London; the A13/M25 interchange, Essex; and the A635 Manchester Road, Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester.

The AA said that 18 million motorists were likely to take to the roads over the three-day break, with the average journey lasting 135 miles. It also said that it expected to deal with 55,000 breakdowns.

Motorists lured by the good weather in the West of England, the Lake District, Blackpool, the Midlands and Norfolk are also expected to encouter traffic jams. The warnings came as a report found that drivers spend an average of 2½ days a year stuck in traffic jams. About 20 per cent endure tailbacks that take five hours to clear, Zurich Insurance found.

On the railways, engineers will work on the West Coast Main Line in the Midlands and at Liverpool Street station in London. The routes are in areas where work overran at the new year.

The West Coast Main Line work at Nuneaton, Milton Keynes, Rugby and along the Trent Valley means that there will be no Virgin Trains service to or from Euston in London throughout the weekend. Instead, services will run only as far south as either Coventry or Birmingham.

In London, Liverpool Street main-line station will be closed on Sunday and Monday for bridge work and there will also be points renewal work at Clapham Junction station.

Iain Coucher, Network Rail’s chief executive, whose company was fined a record £14 million after the new year engineering overran, said: “The work over the May Bank Holiday is all about improving the railway for passengers and freight users.

“Over the long weekend we’ll be investing millions of pounds to make services more reliable, more punctual and in some cases faster and more frequent. While the overwhelming majority of services remain unaffected, our message to passengers is to check before you travel.”

The Met Office forecasts that the weekend will begin with temperatures above average, rising to 20C in London but getting cooler and with a greater chance of rain in the West. Temperatures will rise by Sunday to 22C in London as a band of rain moves in across Wales, Northern Ireland and western Scotland. That front of cloud will then move across the East of the country with broken sunshine by Monday.

Those escaping the mixed weather in Britain are most likely to be taking city breaks in Amsterdam, Barcelona and Geneva. Other popular destinations include Alicante and Málaga in Spain and Faro in Portugal.

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