A45: Birmingham - Thrapston

In its heyday, the A45 ran from the centre of Birmingham all the way out to Felixtowe, and was a vitally important route from the Midlands to the East Anglian coast, and all points beyond towards the Benelux countries via ferry. With the introduction of the A14 (the bastard offspring of the A45 and A604), the current route of the A45 is brutally truncated and runs for less than half its original length, though it still provides an important link between Birmingham, Coventry and Leamington to Northampton and the M1, for those wishing to avoid the M6.

It starts amongst an industrial slum area in Digbeth on the outer ring road, and heads out past Birmingham Airport and the NEC, where it passes the M42 and the Motorcycle Museum. After this it crosses the A446 and bypasses the village of Meriden, which if memory serves claims to be the centre point of England. This section is an old style dual carriageway which I guess was done in the late 60s or 70s.

Just before it gets to Coventry, the A45 swings off to the right along the southern ring road. Whilst this bit is still dualled, it's very much amongst urban Coventry, and everything slows to a complete halt with the lights with the A429 (aka the "old" A46). After this, things pick up again as we head out of the urban area, pick up the southbound A46 and drop it off again at the eastern ring road a few miles later.

After this, the A45 speeds through lots of open flat fields, and is a nice fast drive on a sunny day. The ancient Fosse Way is crossed at a roundabout, and a few miles beyond this, we meet the M45 at an oddly shaped roundabout. The A45 effectively multiplexes with the M45, passing Draycote Water on the right and picks up again the other side of Dunchurch.

From here to the M1, the A45 drops back to two lane single carriageway as it heads towards Daventry. A maze of roundabouts takes us round the Daventry bypass where we multiplex with the mighty A361. This bit can get really frustrating as there's no overtaking allowed on the bypass (the centre of the road is hatched over), though the size of bridges it passes under clearly give the impression an upgrade to dual was under consideration. Presumably the A14 put paid to that idea.

Past Daventry, the A45 is still single carriageway, though the road is quite wide and there are numerous opportunities for overtaking tractors. Recently, there's been a whole load of anti-Iraq graffiti sprayed across some abandoned buildings on this stretch of the road - wonder how long that'll last?

At Weedon, the A45 crosses the A5 at a traffic light controlled crossroads - somewhat of a disappointing junction for two mighty routes. A few miles beyond, we meet the M1. The A45 used to go towards Northampton and skirt around the south of the town close to the banks of the River Nene. However, Andrew Long writes:

The A45 has been moved around Northampton. Coming from the west, it now joins the M1 at J16, leaving again at J15 (taking over part of the A508), before joining its original route south-east of Northampton.

From Northampton the A45 heads towards Wellingborough on a good dualled stretch, bypassing it to the south, and Rushden to the north, where it meets the A6 at a roundabout.

At this point, the original A45 headed out eastwards towards St Neots on a rather slow stretch of road. This has now been downgraded to the B645 (they don't waste imagination when renumbering roads, do they?) Most maps now show the A45 as taking a northerly diversion to the erstwhile A605 where it meets the A14 (aka the erstwhile A604) at Thrapston, but some (including the Bartholemew coverage on Multimap) list this part as still being the A605.

Tom adds:

The signs on the ground at Thrapston in July 2003 referred to the A45, so it looks like Multimap is wrong and the A45 does indeed limp up to Thrapston.

Ritchie