B195

The John Lewis store in Welwyn

The B195 runs through the Hertfordshire New Town of Welwyn Garden City.

Starting at a roundabout on the A414 to the west of Cole Green, the road heads west along Birchall Lane, which soon becomes Cole Green Lane. As we enter wooded country, Cole Green Lane turns left (signposted for the QE2 Hospital) while the B195 continues ahead onto Black Fan Road, a typical New Town distributor. The road passes between residential areas with houses barely visible and only the occasional access road met.

A few roundabouts later in the suburb of Panhanger the road reaches a gyratory on the A1000. To reach the western section of the B195 we must now follow the A1000 for a kilometre, around the gyratory and then along Bessemer Road. (The large size of the gyratory adds 750 m to the distance in the eastbound direction.)

The B195 resumes at traffic lights on Bessemer Road, where we turn right and cross the East Coast Main Line on a D2 bridge. On the far side a roundabout gives access to the town's central shopping district, to our left, while we continue past the imposing northern façade of the John Lewis superstore, also on the left. A park on our right is in fact the central island of a gyratory system: the eastbound B195 follows its northern side along a semi-circular road known as The Campus. We are here at the heart of the Garden City layout as it was first planned nearly 100 years ago. A scenic thoroughfare (The Parkway), with wide central gardens, runs south through the town from this point.

Beyond here the road becomes S2 and shortly we come to a not very well signed TOTSO left ("Through traffic", but no mention of any road number) into the suburban Valley Road which takes us southwestward to the far side of the town. After passing the golf course, on our right, we reach the end of our route at a roundabout junction with on the B197, which follows the original line of the A1 here. This roundabout also forms part of junction 5 of the A1(M) – although the "interchange" amounts in fact to no more than a single onslip from the B197 to the northbound motorway.

An amended OpenStreetMap trace for this route awaits uploading to the SABRE Wiki.

History

The original route of the B195

The B195 number dates to the period after World War II and originally ran only east of Welwyn Garden City. Starting at Cole Green the road headed west along the whole of Cole Green Lane before bearing right onto Woodhall Lane to end on the B190 (present A1000) Broadwater Road. Extension of the New Town of Welwyn Garden City resulted in the declassification of the majority of the B195 and the building of a new road to meet the A1000 to the northeast of the town centre. The route was then also extended westward along part of the former B190 through town to reach the A1. Cole Green has also been bypassed by the A414, cutting back the B195 and giving the road its current route.