Sunshine predicted for bumper Easter bank holiday weekend, with temperatures predicted to soar past Corfu and Barcelona
The UK's bonus holiday – linking Easter, the royal wedding and May Day for nearly a fortnight's break – has started, with scores of extra flights leaving for supposed hotspots overseas.
But many of the long-booked trips will be landing in cooler climates, with pullovers a wise precaution in Corfu and Barcelona, while T-shirt weather continues across the British Isles.
The cooler temperatures along the north Mediterranean coast will see London comfortably hotter at 24C (75F) than Barcelona at 16C and Corfu at 17C .
In the UK, roads to the coast are getting busier, with the Meteorological Office confident that the warm, calm spell will continue well into next week.
The Highways Agency announced the suspension of roadworks at many major sites to help holiday traffic flow, although essential repairs will continue on parts of the M1 and M25. The fire-damaged stretch of the M1 between junctions one and four in London has fully reopened.
Others on the move include bats, which have taken to using canals as a seasonal corridor in the warmth, according to a report from British Waterways, and thousands of browntail moth caterpillars, which have spun sticky canopies of cocoons on Canvey island, in Essex, to pupate earlier than usual.
The sunshine will also illuminate religious events, led by the Queen's Maundy money service at Westminster Abbey. Her distribution of 85 coins to 85 men and 85 women, in memory of Christ washing his disciples' feet at the Last Supper, coincided with her 85th birthday. Had the calendar fallen a day earlier, two "deserving pensioners", chosen for their record of community and church work, would have missed out.
Meanwhile in Manchester, Oldham, Bolton and Bury, bishops and other clergy offered free shoe-shines in local shopping malls, in the Maundy tradition.
Easter's many secular attractions will be joined on Saturday by one of the archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu's characteristic initiatives, a public baptism by total immersion in a tank outside the city's ancient Minster cathedral.
Among 19 recruits from all denominations is Pentecostalist Lovely-Anna Louise Belfon-Kaaba, 23, a student at York University. She said: "I feel so lucky and proud to be publicly declaring my love, trust and faith for Jesus at this special time of the year."
Network Rail is optimistic about smoother journeys than last Easter, with less engineering work over the holiday and an estimated 18% more trains running. There will be disruption, however, on the West Coast line in north-west England, the Great Western line and at Liverpool Street station in London, where essential repairs and modernisation need the quieter holiday period to get work done.
Rail services in Scotland have been disrupted by a trackside fire, which closed the line between Edinburgh and Glasgow as well as the line between Falkirk Grahamston and Cumbernauld.
Holidaymakers travelling overseas this Easter are expected to top 2 million, in spite of the recession and the balmy climate in the UK, with Amsterdam, Dublin, Paris and Rome the favourite European destinations and New York topping long-haul bookings.
Visa Europe said the royal wedding appeared to have led to a 104% rise in flight bookings out of the country next week, although a 244% increase in arrivals from overseas will more than compensate.
VisitEngland said bookings suggested that just over a quarter of UK adults plan a trip involving at least one overnight stay in their own country over the triple-holiday period.
National Express is predicting a bank holiday bonanza for its coaches, with services between London and 67 other centres laid on for the royal wedding. Bored visitors to the UK seaside might like to help remedy statistics released by the Marine Conservation Society, which show that litter on beaches increased by 3% last year.