The recovery behaviour after creep of oriented linear polyethylenes has been studied over the temperature range 20-60 degrees C. A range of samples was examined to identify the influence of draw ratio and molecular weight. It has been shown that in spite of significant differences in recovery strain level, the recovery kinetics are not affected over a wide range of the structural variations and experimental conditions. It is concluded that the time dependent recovery behaviour is consistent with a model where two thermally activated processes are acting in parallel. More exact values for the activation parameters for both processes of the model have been obtained by taking into account the time dependent distribution of the applied stress between these two processes.