England Road Tours - A41 Birkenhead to London

Описание: Today's road tour takes us along a cross country route from Birkenhead on the Wirral in Merseyside, to Oxford Street in London. As it is today, the A41 is split into multiple sections - the first leg from Birkenhead to the Copt Hill interchange near Solihull, borrowing half of the Birmingham inner ring road along the way - and the second leg which branches off at the M40 near Bicester, and continuing into London.

The first section of the A41 starts near Hamilton Square and Woodside Ferry in Birkenhead, and is a high capacity route through the urban areas of Tranmere, New Ferry and Bromborough, before passing the M53 motorway and onto a smaller road through the western side of Ellesmere Port. The A41 then forms the eastern arm around Chester as a dual carriageway, and then wanders into the Cheshire countryside, passing Whitchurch into Shropshire. The road later passes Newport, the A5, M54 motorway, and on to Wolverhampton, Bilston, Wednesbury, West Bromwich, and Birmingham before terminating at the M42 motorway near Solihull. The A41 continues at M40 junction 9, forming the crucial link to Bicester, and then passing on to Aylesbury, and dualling as it passes Tring, Berkhamsted, Hemel Hempstead, and Kings Langley, and then forming one of the major routes around Watford. The road then follows close to the M1 as it reaches Edgware, and borrows part of the A1 at Mill Hill before splitting off again through Brent Cross, Hampstead, Marylebone and finally reaching its terminus at Oxford Street.

Historically, the A41 began at the A5 near Oakengates in Shropshire, in the original 1922 numbering scheme, and ran continuously through to the A5 near Edgware. The middle section was chalked off and became the A4141, A4177, A425, B4100, and A4260. The northern section was equally complicated, with the link from Birkenhead to Oakengates formerly being formed by the A51, A529 and A464. This was renumbered the A41 in 1936, whilst the southern run into London was renumbered around the 1950s.

Filmed May 2023.