A6/Leicester - Derby

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At Leicester, the A6 and A594 multiplex around the inner ring road, with the A594 being the dominant number. On the northwestern section of the ring road the A6 leaves the A594, and runs along what was the A5131 towards Birstall, meeting the B5327 before it gets there. (The old route out of the city was up the Fosse Way, multiplexing with the A46.) This section of the A6 is non-primary.

The A6 then meets the A563 at a grade-separated roundabout, however the A6's line through the junction is not grade-separated, meaning that traffic on the A6 has to stop at the roundabout. After crossing the roundabout the A6 becomes both primary and dual-carriageway, but only for a short distance.

After a few hundred metres, the A6 becomes single-carriageway for a short distance, and runs through Birstall, before becoming dual-carriageway again, this time for a far more substantial length.

Shortly after this stretch of dual carriageway starts, the A6 meets the A46 at a grade-separated junction, but again the A6 is not grade-separated, so has to stop for the roundabout.

The A6 then bypasses Mountsorrel and Quorn. This bypass opened in October 1991 and was built to stop quarry traffic travelling through Mountsorrel. The Mountsorrel and Quorn bypass includes two roundabouts and four grade-separated junctions. The bypass ends at a roundabout with the A6004 where the A6 TOTSOs.

From here the A6 runs towards the centre of Loughborough, but since the opening of the Inner Relief Road in February 2014, it bypasses the town centre along a newly built section of Barrow Street, then along existing streets (Lymington Street and Biggin Street) and then rejoins the old route via a short section of what used to be the B589, which now starts at Fennel Street. (At the time of writing only Google and OpenStreetMap reflected the new layout). In Loughborough the A6 meets the A6004 (twice), the A60, the A512, and the B589 at a variety of signal-controlled and give-way junctions.

A few hundred metres after Loughborough, the A6 runs through Hathern, after which it meets the B5324 and then the A6006, the latter at a signal-controlled junction. There is then a short section of dual carriageway, lasting only a mile or so.

After the end of the dual carriageway, the A6 runs around the village of Kegworth on a new southern bypass that opened in November 2018, before meeting the A453 at a new roundabout to serve the two major routes as well as a new rail freight terminal. The A453 and the A6 then multiplex until the infamous Kegworth Roundabout (M1 J24) where it meets the A50 and M1.

After M1 J24, the A50 and A6 multiplex until the the A50's junction 2, which is a trumpet-type interchange (with the A50 being the dominant number). After this, the A6 runs along a slightly older section of dual carriageway which opened with the A50 Derby Southern bypass on 4 September 1997.

This stretch of A6 ran from the A50 J2 to the Thulston Roundabout, from where the A6 used to run through Alvaston. Since 2003, though, the A6 has bypassed Alvaston. The bypass cost £10.6 million and opened on 17 December 2003. The Alvaston bypass rejoins the old route of the A6 at the Raynesway Park Roundabout, which was a flat roundabout in 2003 when the junction opened, but has since been grade separated, with the A6 being able to run straight through the junction for the first time in early 2011. Photos of the work in progress are available at 1.

From Raynesway Park the A6 runs through the northern part of Alvaston, and then TOTSOs at a roundabout with Ascot Drive to run across Pride Park towards the centre of Derby (here the route is non-primary), and then meets the A601 at The Cock Pitt which is a large, signalised junction. The A6 was diverted across Pride Park as part of the city challenge to regenerate the area in the late 1990s. The former route- straight up London Road to the city centre- has been renumbered as the A5194. From the Cock Pitt, the A6 multiplexes with the A601 for a short distance along St Alkmund's Way, although this section is not signed as any road number. The multiplex continues around St Alkmund's Way as far as Duffield Road, where the A6 leaves the A601 at a grade-separated trumpet-type junction (which is modified so there is no access to the A6 from the A601 clockwise) and passes through the Five Lamps junction, before continuing through the Darley Abbey and Allestree areas of the city and then heading off in a north-westerly direction towards the Peak District.

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