B600

Route

The B600 is a medium-length B-road in the East Midlands.

The road starts at the Nuthall island off M1 junction 26, with the A610 and A6002. The first section of this approaches Nuthall itself, and used to be the A610 before the bypass was built. A TOTSO on the B600 results just after it crosses under the M1, the old A610, now unclassified, continues through Nuthall and on to Kimberley and Eastwood. This was always the starting point of the old A613, as the M1 pre-dates the A610 bypass - junction 26 was originally a spur to the A610.

East of Greasley

Skirting Nuthall to the north we enter Watnall, shortly after which the B6009 leaves towards Hucknall. The B600 passes through small villages like Greasley and then Moorgreen, where it meets the B6010 to Eastwood. Now more rural, it twists past Moorgreen reservoir, running across the dam, and on towards Underwood and the A608. The two roads multiplex for a while; given the current situation it is surprising that the junction priorities favour the B600 - the A608 has to give way to the B600 at both junctions. However, when you consider the B600 is the former A613 it becomes more logical, plus the trajectories of the junctions are both quite acute.

Leaving Underwood on the second A608 TOTSO, the B600 heads through Bagthorpe and at Selston turns sharply left and ends its paralleling of the M1. Now heading westwards, the road shortly crosses the county boundary into Derbyshire (at Pye Bridge) and enters Somercotes. The road steers gradually to the north and then crosses the current A38 at a grade-separated interchange before entering Alfreton, where it ends at a mini-roundabout on the B6019 a short distance east of the A61.

History

With the exception of the short section east of the centre of Nuthall which was the original route of the A610 all of the above was numbered A613 in 1922 and was an important route northwest of Nottingham. However, the construction of the M1 in the 1960s provided a much faster route on this corridor, so the road was given the B600 number around 1971.

This was, as far as is known, the first use of the B600 number, a fact that is due to an interesting anomaly in the English road-numbering system. In the other 5 zones, all numbers between Bx00 and Bx49 were originally allocated to the County of London (although in no cases were all 50 numbers used); however, the 6 zone did not reach central London, going no further south than Chipping Barnet, on the Middlesex/Hertfordshire border, so no numbers lower than the B650 were originally allocated. The legacy of this can be seen today, with few of these numbers ever having been used.

Original Author(s): Forest Chav