A519

Crossing the Shropshire Union Canal

A non-primary route almost throughout, the A519 is another Midlands rural ride from one two-digit "A" to another: from Newport in Shropshire to Newcastle-under-Lyme via Eccleshall.

Originally the route started on the A464 (A41 after 1935) in Newport town centre. When that road was moved onto the bypass the road was extended slightly to meet the A518 but it was truncated when the A518 bypass was built. Today, therefore, the A519 begins on the A41 Newport bypass, a mile north of the town centre.

After a few miles of rolling countryside and a few small villages, the road passes over the Shropshire Union canal. It's worth parking up for a moment to look down from the bridge to the canal in its deep wooded cutting below. Back on the road, Eccleshall is soon reached: an attractive country town, winner of several civic awards and the end of the A5013. From here the road passes over the West Coast Main Line railway, where Mill Meece pumping station is clearly visible to the left, before we run past the Swynnerton MoD training camp.

The A51 is crossed next, at a roundabout dating from the 2000s, before the A519 sidles up to the northbound carriageway of the M6 at Knowl Wall (great place name!), and dives under the motorway at the back of Trentham Gardens, immediately to the north of the infamous motorway bridge with a fence across the middle. At this point a clutch of roads and a roundabout connect with the M6 Hanchurch Interchange (junction 15). This gives us the only primary section of the A519: the few hundred feet between the crossroads with the A5182 and the interchange roundabout, making this part of the A519 the main road from the M6 to Shrewsbury. The A519 then heads north through the suburbs of Newcastle. Until the 1990s, it carried on to the A525 in the town's western suburbs but now turns sharply right along the former B5043 to reach the A34 and the town's ring road.