A66 road

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Template: Infobox high-ranking street / Maintenance / GB-A
A66 road in the UK
A66 road
map
Course of the A 66
Basic data
Operator: Highways Agency
Start of the street: Workington
( 54 ° 39 ′  N , 3 ° 33 ′  W )
End of street: Grangetown
( 54 ° 35 ′  N , 1 ° 9 ′  W )
Overall length: 185 km (115  mi )

Countries :

England

A66- Roman road looking towards Old Spital - geograph.org.uk - 401533.jpg
The A66 in the eastern part of the mountain section

The A66 , upgraded in a short section to the A66 (M) motorway , is a main thoroughfare in northern England . It runs from Workington on the Irish Sea eastwards to Middlesbrough on the North Sea and is the most important and best-developed road crossing in the northern Pennines . Accordingly, it is classified as a primary route along its entire length and thus belongs to the highest road class below the motorways.

The Pennines Passage rises to more than 400 meters in open, largely uninhabited mountain country and is exposed to adverse weather conditions, in winter there is often heavy snowfall and blizzards. The A66 is one of the most accident-prone stretches on the English road network and is continuously being expanded.

course

Lowlands to the west

The street begins in Workington. In the city center with its pedestrian zone and the shopping centers, the A596 runs in a north-south direction, from which it branches off as a two-lane country road to the east. After serving as the southern bypass of the town of Cockermouth , it enters the Lake District National Park and traverses its northern part through Keswick .

A few kilometers before Penrith it leaves the national park again and merges into a developed section with separate lanes. In Penrith it has a connection to the M6 motorway and then follows the valley of the River Eden south-east up via Appleby-in-Westmorland to Brough . In this section, only bypasses have been developed with two lanes.

Mountain crossing

The mountain range over the Pennines begins in Brough. From here to the village of Bowes , where the A67 branches off to Barnard Castle , the road is completely built with separate two-lane lanes, but not free of intersections - exits and junctions cross the oncoming lane. Just west of the apex at 441  m ASL , the border between the counties of Cumbria and Durham is crossed. The high moor Bowes Moor extends south of the road from the apex to Bowes . From Bowes onwards, the road still has largely, but no longer continuously, separate lanes and reaches the A1 at the Scotch Corner junction .

The mountain section follows a Roman road that connected Cataractonium (today's Catterick ) with Luguvallium (today's Carlisle ). The road looks very isolated here: on the 21 kilometers from Brough to Bowes it runs through natural highlands, the few settlements are limited to lonely rest stops and small farms. Bowes, the largest settlement in this section, is a village of less than 500 people. On the 25 kilometers from Bowes to Scotch Corner, some larger homesteads and the hamlet of Greta Bridge are touched, but no longer closed towns.

Lowlands in the east

From Scotch Corner, the A66 initially runs 6.3 km northwards on the A1 (M), which has been converted into a motorway here, past Barton , then branches off the A1 (M) in an easterly direction - upgraded for the next 3 kilometers to the A66 (M) motorway. M), bypasses Darlington both south and east and then turns to the Teesside metropolitan area , which it crosses without intersections in the function of an urban motorway. East of Middlesbrough at Grangetown the road ends at a roundabout for the A1053.

Cultural references

  • The writer James Herriot describes in one of his stories a daring drive from the east via Bowes Moor to Appleby and back in heavy snowfall. At the time of the action, there was neither the street name nor an upgraded route, but the "road over Bowes Moor" must mean today's A66.

See also

Web links

Commons : A66 road (England)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to this report from 2002 , accessed on August 17, 2019, there have been 70 deaths in the non-developed sections over the past ten years.
  2. ↑ The 1991 census showed 476 inhabitants. Published 2002, accessed September 5, 2019.
  3. ↑ in the book All Things Bright and Beautiful , Chapter 24th