A6 road
Categories: Roads in the United Kingdom
This article is about the A6 road in England. For other roads of the same name, and all other uses, go to the A6 (disambiguation page).
The A6 is a major road in England. It runs from Luton in Bedfordshire to Carlisle in Cumbria.
Running north west from Luton, the road travels through Bedford, bypasses both Kettering and Market Harborough, continues through Leicester, Loughborough, Derby and Matlock before going through the Peak District to Bakewell, Buxton, Stockport, Manchester, Chorley, Preston, Lancaster, Kendal and Penrith before reaching Carlisle.
South of Nottingham, the road is parallelled by the M1 motorway, and north of Manchester the M6 motorway approximates its course.
North of Luton, the one-mile £9.4m dual-carriageway Barton in the Clay Bypass was opened in December 1990. The one-mile £2m Silsoe Bypass opened in February 1981. The one-mile £3m Elstow Bypass opened in early 1983. North of Bedford, the three-mile £26m dual-carriageway Clapham Bypass opened on December 12th 2002, named the Paula Radcliffe Way, after the marathon runner who went to school at nearby Sharnbrook. South of Kettering, the three-mile £10m part-dual-carriageway Rushden & Higham Ferrers Bypass opened on August 14th 2003, where the road meets the A45. The road still goes through Finedon. There is a Shell garage just north of the village. The two-mile £2.6m Burton Latimer Bypass opened in October 1991. Weetabix is accessible from the roundabout with the A14. Kettering was bypassed when sections of the east-west corridor A14 were built. Between the A6 junction and A509 junction, there are BP garages, Little Chef and Burger King restaurants on each side of the road. Near the Rothwell junction, there is an Esso garage and McDonalds restaurant on the east-bound carriageway. The five-mile three-lane £11.4m Rothwell-Desborough Bypass opened on August 14th 2003. The road enters Leicestershire at the start of the five-mile £9.5m Market Harborough Bypass, which was opened in June 1992. There is a Texaco garage and McDonalds restaurant at the junction with the B6047 (for Melton Mowbray) at the north end of the bypass. The A6 still passes through the village centre of Kibworth Harcourt. The three-mile dual-carriageway Great Glen Bypass opened on February 19th 2003, though operated as a dual-carriageway only after April 4th 2003.
On the outskirts of Leicester, the road passes a Sainsbury's supermarket at Oadby. Further in, it passes the Esso Oadby service station garage on the right hand side, an Asda supermarket, then a BP garage, before reaching the outer ring-road (A563), next to Leicester Racecourse. There is a Shell garage just after the roundabout where A563 and A6 join. The road becomes London Road. It passes close to Leicester University, and crosses the Midland Main Line near Leicester railway station. In the centre of Leicester, it is subsumed into Leicester's inner ring-road, the A594. Before this, it went via Charles Street, and before then, down Granby Street and Gallowtree Gate.
On the northern outskirts of Leicester, the road passes the National Space Centre in Belgrave then meets at a roundabout with the A563 outer ring-road. Leicestershire Constabulary have a training college near here in Birstall. North of Leicester, the road meets the A46 Leicester Western Bypass just south of Rothley and the start of the four-mile £43.3m dual-carriageway Quorn-Mountsorrel Bypass, which opened in October 1991. From here the road goes through Loughborough. In Loughborough there is a BP garage at the Elms Park service station, and close-by a Sainsbury's supermarket; a blessing for vegetarian students at the local university. Just north of Hathern, where the A6006 and B532 meet the road, there is an Esso garage at Hathern Turn service station. It joins the M1 at the extremely busy roundabout of junction 24, which is where the A50 Derby-Stoke Link begins. The road follows one of the former A6 dual-carriageway sections before meeting traffic from the south-bound M1 at junction 24a. South-bound traffic on the A6 here has to negotiate a roundabout and a set of traffic lights, which has numerous and lengthy hold-ups at peak times. The three-laned A6 multiplexes with the A50 for a couple of miles and crosses the Trent and Mersey Canal. The A50/A6 passes a Welcome Break service station, with a Burger King and Shell garage on both sides of the road near Shardlow. The next section, the A6 Spur, was opened with the A50 in September 1997. The £10.6m dual-carriageway Alvaston Bypass/Improvement opened on 17th December 2003.
The road goes through Derby initially along London Road, then Pride Parkway, which is related to the adjacent Pride Park business park and Pride Park Stadium, home of Derby County F.C.. The road passes close to the centre of Derby, with a large roundabout beside the 1960s-designed Eagle Centre. The road multiplexes with the A601, Derby's inner ring-road. North of Derby, there is a roundabout junction with the A38. In leafy Allestree, it passes a Shell garage. The road follows the Derwent Valley through Duffield and Belper, where the road goes past a large mill, formerly owned by Richard Arkwright, and now a museum. There is also a large Morrisons supermarket here. Matlock Bath is a mecca for motorbikers, and many use the A6 for pleasure and speed.
From Buxton, the road goes to Stockport. The four-mile £38m part-dual-carriageway Chapel-en-le-Frith & Whaley Bridge Bypass opened in August 1987. There were plans in the 1970s for a bypass around Stockport, by a motorway, the A6(M), which never was given the go-ahead, although many construction schemes were designed. Due to build up of traffic in the Stockport area, the same scheme is now going to be built as the A555, to link up east of Stockport with the M60.
- Former route in the south
The route of the A6 south of Luton is now the A1081 for most of its length. In the initial road numbering scheme, the A6 started in Barnet where it joined what was then the A1 Great North Road. From Barnet the road went to London Colney, St. Albans, Harpenden to join the current start of the road at Luton. At St. Albans, the road met the then A5 at a crossroads: going north on both roads, the A5 arriving from the southwest, and leaving the crossroads northwest, and the A6 arriving from the southeast and leaving to the north east. Nowadays that stretch of the A5 has also been renumbered so that the crossroads in St. Albans in now A5183 and A1081. Nonetheless it is still a busy crossroads but would presumably be busier if the roads had retained their earlier identities.
See also
- A6 murder - the August 1961 murder of Michael Gregsten at a lay-by on the A6 in Bedfordshire, and the controversial trial and execution of James Hanratty for the crime.