Holiday travel: heaven, or hell?

And so the travel season begins, with every prospect of traffic-clogged major roads and motorway misery. Or not.

It doesn’t have to be that way but, to stand a real promise of whizzing along clear roads, you need an eye for detail and the fine judgement of a pro racing tipster. When to travel, when and where to stop, whether a longer route means a quicker journey. And a little help can take you a long way.

Motors.co.uk can’t promise you a wonderful journey. But what we can give is sound advice. If you’d rather not be among the 47,000 drivers needing help from the AA, RAC or other breakdown rescuers, follow our guide to making sure that your car is fit for the trip. If you’ve kids aboard, we can also suggest ways to keep them from driving themselves, and you, crazy.

And finally, we can tell you when and where the hold-ups will come, based on info gleaned from the jam data experts.

According to the AA, travellers will, on average cover 300 miles over a holiday. So a few minutes scanning our pages is, we reckon, time wisely spent.

We wish you safely and well on the roads. But do tell us how it was. Smooth or stop-stop-go, heavenly or horrible, share your travelling tales here. We’d particularly like to hear from anyone who had an unexpectedly good trip. Or, if you've suffered the journey from hell – tell us about that, too!