The A42: Now you see it, now you don't

Okay, so this is not necessarily "missing" now, but for a long time it was. Back in the heady days of 1990, I was working for the fabbo car company Ford, and one day, I decided to phone a chap who worked in the Department of Transport and ask whatever happened to the A42. You see, at that point, the M42 had been built, but it is not the M42 which connects to the M1. It is a bit of dual carriageway then numbered the A42. My question was thus:

If the A41 and the A43 exist, presumably there was once an A42. The number could not have just been waiting all these years for the Birmingham orbital to M1 link road. Where was it?

The charming gentleman at the DOT was very patient whilst I waded through the huge question. Without a pause he answered:

The majority of the A42 was absorbed into the A34 very early on. It used to run from Reading to Oxford, thence to Chipping Norton, up to Stratford on Avon and then to Birmingham. It was decided to make the A34 a complete Manchester-Southampton route, and this necessitated the A42 being swallowed up.

At least that was the gist of it. Many years later I got hold of my NCPW (the postwar News Chronicle atlas), which shows the A42 in all it's glory. So there you are pop fans, the real location of the erstwhile A42. We all know where the new one is, but from now on you can drive family and friends mad telling them about it. Go on, it's great fun, especially when that glazed look appears.

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