THE rush to escape this Easter looks set to choke the region's roads if predictions for brighter Bank Holiday weather come true.

The combination of a late Easter, the closeness of the May Day break and the prospect of spring sunshine has led to fears that travellers' dreams of getting away from it all could quickly become nightmares.

But Denise Raven, of the AA, said the real deciding factor on the roads would be the weather.

"In some respects the roads could be quite steady, because it seems a lot of people are taking extra days off," she said.

But if the latest forecast - for good weather on Friday and Saturday, but possibly turning worse from Sunday - proved correct, then the traditional honeypot areas for a day out, like Scarborough, Bridlington and Filey, would be particularly busy.

That would mean heavy traffic on the A64 - "a big line of cars from Leeds to Scarborough" - and probably also on the A171 around Whitby, as well as roads around places like Hornsea and Great Driffield.

If people weren't heading for the beach then roads to Ripon, Masham and Hawes were also likely to be busy.

Even if the sun didn't shine she thought the York ring road would still be busy, as people would be heading for shops and indoor entertainment.

She advised people to stagger their journeys, get away from the main roads, and take something to eat in the car.

But one light on the horizon for motorists is the lack of roadworks on main routes.

The Highways Agency has ensured most lanes are open for Easter, except on the M62 between Howden and North Cave, where a reduction to one lane each way will have to stay in place.

Meanwhile many local people are aiming to escape Britain altogether.

Humberside International Airport is predicting a record Easter weekend with over 3,000 passengers. Commercial services manager Richard Whitehouse said many were heading for Paris, Amsterdam, Majorca and the Canaries.

Philip Firth, head of marketing and business development at Leeds-Bradford International Airport, said they would be handling 58,000 passengers over Easter, 15 per cent up on last year. Top destinations were the Canaries, Spain, Amsterdam and Brussels.

And the latest weather? PA meteorologist Michael Dukes said: "It looks like being a weekend of sunny spells and scattered heavy showers."