A26
From Roader's Digest: The SABRE Wiki
| A26 | ||||||||||
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| From: | Maidstone (TQ755554) | |||||||||
| To: | Newhaven (TQ449016) | |||||||||
| Length: | 49 miles (78.9 km) | |||||||||
| Meets: | A20, A21, A22, A27 | |||||||||
| Primary Destinations | ||||||||||
| Lewes • Maidstone • Newhaven • Royal Tunbridge Wells • Uckfield • | ||||||||||
| Highways Authorities | ||||||||||
| Traditional Counties | ||||||||||
| Route outline (key) | ||||||||||
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Route
The A26 starts on the small one-way system in Maidstone near the West Station, where it splits from the A20. It then travels west-ish out through Barming (interesting point: there was once an asylum here, and this is where the word 'barmy' came from), then along the Medway valley to Wateringbury. It meets the A228 at a roundabout in Mereworth, and from here the road is primary.
The A228 now multiplexes with us for a short way: originally it finished here, but it's been greedy recently and has taken over some of the B2016 and B2015 - the A228, by the way, is a much better route to Tunbridge Wells from here than the A26 and is signed as such, while the A26 is signed towards Tonbridge.
We're well and truly in the countryside now, and there are lots of seemingly pointless bends in the road, and little lanes joining on either side, signed with fingerposts (sadly the new-style ones though). Through Hadlow, and we enter Tonbridge. The A26 used to go into town, down the High Street and past the station, but a few years ago it was diverted around an eastern bypass, with the Somerhill Link built in the early 1990s. It's a very circuitous route, past industrial estates and over lots of roundabouts, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it, unless you wanted to go south on the A21 (but then you'd have used the A228!). So to resume the route of the A26, you'd think you just have to hop on the A21 for a bit then come off again. Now, here's the good bit: there's no access to the A26 from the A21 northbound, so to rejoin the proper route into town you have to follow the A2014 back in and come out again. So you might as well have gone through the town centre... The A21/A26 junction, apart from being only limited access, is quite exciting: it's like a roundabout gone wrong, as the two carriageways of the A26 are separated at this point, but there are some interesting bridges etc. I think the movement from A21 southbound - A26/whatever it's called into Tonbridge is possible, but you have to go round 270 degrees instead of just turning left.
Anyway, the A26 goes through the centre of Tunbridge Wells (awfully nice, don't you know), then out into Sussex. A section between Eridge and Crowborough was improved in the early 1990s and the road aligned and climbing lanes added and then passes through Crowborough without too much trouble, then to Uckfield. We multiplex with the A22 here around the bypass then split again at a roundabout in Ridgewood. The South Downs are looming large here, and we enter Lewes.
The centre of Lewes is a bit of a nightmare, or has been the few times that I've been down there, as the streets are horrendously narrow and congested. In fact, during the 70s, there was the threat of sending the A27 on a 'relief road' straight through the middle, and widening the A26. Instead these plans were thrown out, and a tunnel built instead, with the A27 routed onto a bypass outside the town. So the A26 no longer goes through the middle of town, but through the Cuilfail tunnel - the Friends of Lewes say that the tunnel should have been extended to Earwig Corner (wherever that might be!).
Originally, the A26 used to out through the west of Lewes, then along the present A27 to finish in Brighton. Then, the A27 was extended further east, and the A26 was truncated in Lewes. However, when the Lewes bypass was built (I think), the A26 was extended, via a multiplex with the A27, to make the final descent into Newhaven, along the ex-B2109, where we finish on the A259. From here you can catch a ferry into Dieppe.
