A914

The A914 is a route in north-east Fife that forms a detour of the A92 between Muirhead, north of Glenrothes and Newport, south of the Tay Road Bridge. The A92 and A914 make interesting companions with the latter only a mile or so longer than its trunk road bypass and fortunate enough to serve the largest town in these parts, Cupar. It may not surprise you to learn that the two routes are inexorably linked, the numbers being swapped in the 1990s.

Route

Muirhead - Cupar

Approaching Cupar and the junction with the A916.

The route starts by heading north east from the New Inn Roundabout in Muirhead, also the terminus of the A912 which extends off in a north-westerly direction. For the first couple of miles to Kettlebridge, the A914 shadows the Edinburgh to Dundee railway line, the two routes diverging on the approach to the village. Apart from one house, the village lies to the north of the road, with a long line of old single storey cottages facing open fields to the south. The road then continues past the B9129 junction, running along the foot of the hills to the south of the River Eden as it passes through Balmalcolm and on to Pitlessie, with its attractive juxtaposition of farmland and village inn. It’s a good, fast road with some long straights, but it can also be busy at times.

Beyond Pitlessie, the road continues eastwards, undulating gently, with only a handful of roadside buildings, but many more dotted across the landscape and accessed via lanes and drives. Patches of woodland stretch along the roadside, and other blocks of trees can be seen on the hillside, with a larger area of woodland around Clushford Toll, a crossroads giving access to Springfield across the Eden. The hillside to the south then becomes steeper once more, and the meandering Eden is closer to the road, but still mostly hidden. Then, at the entrance to Cupar the A916 joins from the south, The A914 and A916 having run almost parallel for around three quarters of a mile, the the former in the Eden valley and the latter ambitiously snaking through the hills to its south. The junction here represents a near U-turn for A914 northbound traffic, with short cuts available, so most continues directly into Cupar.

After the long straights across the farmland, the road starts to weave a little as it enters town, following South Road past the southern suburbs and then the supermarkets. A series of sharp curves carry the A914 over the railway bridge directly outside Cupar station and then over the River Eden on Victoria Bridge to the east of the town centre. Whereas the A92 ran directly up the Crossgate, over South Bridge, the A914 stays one block to its east. The A91 then approaches from the west to bring an end to the southern section of A914 at a complex double-mini-roundabout junction festooned with lane diagrams and verbose signage. It’s not immediately clear how to get back on to the A914 from here but the A91 and A914 multiplex eastwards for around three miles.

Dairsie - Newport-on-Tay

The A914 resumes at the Dairsie Roundabout a little to the east of the village, and continues northwards. The route is much as before, with flatter land to run through than many similar routes even in central Scotland. There’s another roundabout at the entrance to Balmullo but no other interruption on its wide Main Street. Beyond the village, the road ceases to be straight, as it winds round the fields towards St Michaels, dipping under the railway just before the junction. The only real drama on the route comes about at St Michaels where huge signs with yellow backing boards bellow at drivers to get their speed down to 30 and give way at the end of the A919, the short-cut between Dundee and St Andrews. There is also an option to take the B945 to the seaside village of Tayport.

After the TOTSO with the A919, there are just two more villages left, Pickletillum and Drumoig, steadily combining to form a single golf resort which makes sense given the relative proximity to St Andrews. A mile later, however, and the A914 comes to an end. The A92 emerges from between the trees and is met at Forgan Roundabout at the southern end of the Newport-on-Tay bypass, with the Tay Road Bridge itself at the end of a short dual carriageway just over the next hill.

History

The old route of the A914

In 1922, the A914 started on the A913 near Parbroath Crossroads, then followed the current A92 and B946 into Newport on Tay, where it ended on the A92 on the banks of the Tay. Logic suggests that this should have been at the southern end of the Tay Ferry, however, the OS Six inch and later 1:10000 maps suggest a useless multiplex north along the High Street to meet the A92 and B946 at the James Street junction where the A92 came to a temporary end, before resuming in Dundee. In 1935, the road was extended southwards from the A913, along what was originally the B937, to meet the A92 again at Muirhead (now the New Inn Roundabout).

The A92 and A914 swapped roles in 1996, soon after the A90 was extended from Perth up the east coast. The primary route from Glenrothes to Dundee had always been the western one regardless of its number – at least since the days of the Newport-on-Tay bypass and the Tay Road Bridge – and so the swap was made to give it a continuous number. However, it is believed that prior to 1996 it was only a trunk route as far as the junction with A91, although map evidence is unclear on this. The net result is around 15 miles of A914, split roughly in the middle by three miles of A91 between Cupar and Dairsie.

There are two legacies of this exchange for the A914; firstly just about every sign for the A914 has been patched from A92, and secondly the forward destinations on such are the Forth and Tay Road Bridges, giving the road an apparent delusion of grandeur. This is done mostly at the expense of Cupar, which is now far and away the most likely destination of an A914 user.

The 1922 MOT Road List defines this route as: Junction with A913 near Moonzie - Wormit - Newport