Welcome

to our site all about the A6 and M6 roads and the counties, cities, towns and villages the A6 and M6 road passes through along the way. We have updated the site for 2012 with the inclusion of Videos on both the A6 and the M6.

The A6 is no longer a Trunk Road, however it ranges from the heights of the fells in Cumbria and Derbyshire to the centres of large cities such as Manchester, Derby and Leicester.

The M6 is Britains longest motorway. Parts of it is the oldest motorway in Britain, whilst the photo above taken at the northern end of the M6 is Britains newest Motorway.

A6 Trunk Road

We are building this section north to south, we look at the route of the A6, how it developed from Roman roads through Saxon and Norman times and Turnpikes to become the A6 in the Twentieth century and currently look at the counties. villages, Towns and Cities the A6 runs through.

The A6 runs from today from Luton in the south, to Carlisle in the north however in times past it ran from London going northwest to eventually end in Carlisle. Of England's original Cardinal or one number routes the A6 at 299 miles is second only in length to the A1. It goes from the heights of the fells of Cumbria and Derbyshire to urban stretches through cities such as Manchester and Leicester, in fact the A6 passes through 7 of Englands Cities.

M6 Motorway

The M6 contains the Preston Bypass Britain's first Motorway, and in the section across what was once the Cumberland Gap Britains newest Motorway. from its origins round Preston it has been extended north and south so today it runs from the M1 just east of Rugby to the Scottish border near Gretna Green.

This site looks at several aspects of the M6 including the M6 route, and on outline of the motorway through the different counties as well as details of all of the junctions, some we have added moving flash movies including looking at 2 dangerous junctions 34 at Lancaster and 19 at Knutsford. We look at how queues form on motorways by means of moving Flash movies looking at how a regular queue forms approaching junction 32 at Preston. We also look at a lost junction near Shap, and, and the most famous junction of all Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham.

The M6 is currently the only motorway in Britain to have a toll relief section, the M6 Toll cuts out the very busy section through Birmingham on a new road from near Cannock to rejoin the original M6 just east of Birmingham

Cities, Towns & Villages

The A6 goes through seven of England's cities currently starting at Carlisle on to Lancaster then Englands newest city of Preston it then passes through the twin cities of Salford and Manchester the largest city on the current A6, entering the midland it passes through Derby and Leicester currently the southern most city on the A6. In times past it went through St Albans and into London.

The M6 follows the A6 route north of Preston before taking a more westerly route near to the cities of Stoke on Trent, Birmingham and Coventry.

Both roads pass through or near to about 30 towns and numerous villages each adding its own character to the roads.

Photo Galleries

We have photo gallery   that currently contains just over 600 photos which you are welcome to browse, copy, print and use in your websites etc. However it could contain a lot more, the reason we used the coppermine gallery is that users can upload there own photos to the gallery ...the first person other than ourselves has now added there photos, thank you Johhny, if you have any relevant photos of the A6 or M6 or the places on or nearby why not upload them to our gallery for visitors to see?

Live Content

We  are progressively introducing more live news including News about the counties the A6 & M6 passes through also travel news for the area. Anything that goes happens on the A6 or M6 will eventually be reported here at the moment there is a Live News Travel News Page for Cumbria and a  similar page for Lancashire meaning that we have already covered about a third of the M6 and over a quarter of the A6