Two million holidaymakers eager to start their holidays this weekend faced travel pandemonium yesterday – amid road, airport and port delays.

Most schools in England and Wales have now broken up for the summer, prompting families desperate to avoid our gloomy weather to depart for the Continent’s “Charon” heatwave.

But as hundreds of thousands headed to airports and over 20,000 flocked to Dover, a surge resulted in frustratingly long queues.

There were an estimated 12.6 million car journeys, but – ominously for those aiming to set off now – today is expected to be the busiest day of the weekend, travel association Abta said.

Heathrow and Gatwick are likely to be the busiest airports this weekend – while Stansted bosses were predicting 200,000 departing passengers, Luton 116,000, Manchester 200,000, Bristol 71,000 and Glasgow over 100,000.

READ MORE: Traffic hell set to hit the UK as big holiday getaways begin

Airline Jet2.com and sister firm Jet2holidays have declared that this weekend will be the busiest in their history, with more than 800 flights due to transport hundreds of thousands of customers to sunnier climes.

Nightmare traffic jams will be even longer – and possibly worsened by forecasts for heavy showers, amid talk of thunderstorms tomorrow.

Yesterday National Highways added to tailbacks by closing part of the Dartford Crossing just before 7am due to a crash, which led to five miles of static traffic. The key south London tunnel reopened later. On the northbound carriageway of the M6, a crash involving a lorry also led to chaos and four miles of congestion.

Another jam hotspot was the M5 south from near Bristol to Bridgwater – a popular route for holidaymakers travelling to the South West – while drivers also came a cropper on the M25 clockwise from junction 10 to six.

Meanwhile, those heading for French getaways via Dover were met with long early morning border check delays – although they eased later on.

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Shortly after 6am, it was taking about 90 minutes for people to pass through Dover’s border checks due to it being “an extremely popular travel day”. Processing times then fell but were back up to 50 minutes at 11am. By mid-afternoon, more than 20,000 people had managed to get through the Kent hub and across the Channel.

Enhanced post-Brexit passport checks by French border officials have driven up processing times at the port.

Those due to cross this weekend are being told to arrive up to three hours before sailing times – but no more than that.

Karen Baurdoux, of Dover’s ferry operator DFDS, said: “As it is one of the busiest weekends of the year, we would like to echo Port of Dover’s message that passengers should not arrive more than three hours before their scheduled sailing time.

“This is to help reduce the congestion on the roads approaching and through Dover.”

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Locals have slammed the port’s “poor planning” to stop traffic delays ahead of the busy summer holidays.

Resident Paul Briggs tweeted yesterday: “What a joke! Local residents unable to use the roads that they would use because you’ve coned them off to help at the port.”

With more than 7,500 expected to reach Dover today, DFDS is operating additional sailings to meet demand.

Elsewhere, rail passengers will not be escaping the bedlam today due to further punishing strikes by Rail, Maritime and Transport union members, which will include station staff as well as train managers.

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