A46 road
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The A46 is a trunk road in England.
It starts at Cleethorpes, then heads west into Grimsby. It turns south at Caistor, bypasses Market Rasen, then heads toward Lincoln. After bypassing Lincoln, it starts following the route of the old Fosse Way, bar bypasses. It bypasses Newark-On-Trent, and continues south-west, meeting the A52 near Bingham. As it enters Leicestershire, it is going nearly directly south. It bypasses Syston, and then Leicester, becoming the Leicester Western Bypass or relief road, then merging into the M1 motorway at Junction 21A.
The A46 used to exist between Leicester and Coventry, but it has been replaced by the M69 motorway. Consequently the A46 reappears at Coventry, forming the eastern bypass of the city. At the southern end of that bypass, it merges with the A45 for a short distance before forming a bypass for the Warwickshire towns of Kenilworth and Warwick, and the small village of Leek Wooton. It meets the M40 motorway at the Longbridge roundabout, one of the busiest motorway junctions in the United Kingdom, that is notorious for its congestion. South of the M40, the A46 follows its original route for a short distance before bypassing Stratford upon Avon to the west. It then turns west along the former A422 to Alcester, which is again bypassed. From Alcester, a dual carriageway carries the route south to Evesham, which is bypassed by a single carriageway road. The A46 then runs south for a few miles along the former A435 route, before turning west, on the old A438 route, towards the M5 motorway.
After a gap filled in by the A435, the A46 reappears on its original route on the south side of Cheltenham. It then heads through Stroud, through Nailsworth, to the M4 motorway. From the M4, the A46 heads to Bath, ending at its junction with the A4 in that town.
Former routes
As the above indicates, the A46 now deviates from its original alignment. There are now two sections where there are gaps of over 10 miles where the road simply does not exist at all.
Many of the deviations are bypasses. A46 bypasses Market Rasen, Lincoln, Newark, Syston, Leicester, Coventry, Kenilworth, Warwick, Stratford, Alcester, Evesham and parts of Bath. However, not even all of those towns were originally on the route of the A46. The road never came anywhere near Alcester and Evesham when it was first numbered.
The first major gap in the A46 was created by the opening of the M69 motorway in the late 1970s. This resulted in the original road being downgraded to a mixture of B routes and unclassified roads. The second gap was created by the realignment of the road westwards from its original route between Stratford and Cheltenham. What was originally the A46 is now the B4632 and runs through some of the most picturesque parts of the Cotswold Hills.