B6462

Crossing the River Don

The B6462 follows the route which the A629 formerly took through Penistone before that town was bypassed in the 1940s.

The road turns off the A629 at the northern end of the bypass and heads southeast, signposted for Manchester as it cuts the corner to the A628 (it's also the diversion route for overheight A628 traffic). We descend away from the A-road and pass the water works (Scout Dike Reservoir is nearby), before quickly reaching the outskirts of Penistone. Passing underneath a bird-motif footbridge linking Penistone Grammar School with its playing fields, it's not long before the A628 is reached and there's a multiplex to the right over the River Don to traffic lights. The A628 turns right (taking Manchester-bound traffic with it) whilst the B6462 turns left to regain its number.

We climb away from the river and soon go under a bridge carrying the former railway line from Manchester to Sheffield via Woodhead, then turn left at a roundabout to reach the town centre, where things are more complicated than they need to be. After running along Market Street there's a badly signed TOTSO left into Shrewsbury Road. This is part of an anti-clockwise one-way loop the B6462 makes around Market Place. Some maps also show Church Street, one block north, with our number too; this is one-way eastbound (it's unclear whether this ever was the B6462, which seems unlikely, or is a long-standing mapping error).

Shrewsbury Road continues downhill, between the church and the cinema, under the Woodhead Line and then past the station, still open on the Penistone Line, which we then go under. Although there's a brief glimpse of open fields the road remains built-up as it leaves town along Sheffield Road. We run through the suburb of Springvale then go back under the Penistone Line to run through Oxspring. It's only now that we enter open country.

The road runs through an S-bend to bridge the River Don, which has been running parallel since we last crossed it in Penistone, then climbs the steep Thurgoland Bank out of the valley. At the top of the hill we enter Thurgoland and end at a T-junction back on the A629.