M6 Lancaster-Penrith

Published on 23 May 2020
Front cover of a booklet with the title "M6 Motorway Lancaster to Penrith" superimposed over a black and white artist's impression of a motorway curving through a steep-sided valley
Front cover of the M6 Lancaster to Penrith commemorative booklet

Often described as the most scenic, the most dramatic and the most remarkable length of motorway ever built in the UK, the M6 between Lancaster and Penrith is undeniably an amazing length of road.

Built through the beautiful but bleak fells that lie between the Lake District and the Forest of Bowland, the 35 miles of motorway built in this one project are like no other. It's not just a feat of engineering, but also a fine example of infrastructure design, fitting a major highway into its environment in a thoughtful way. In 1971 the Civic Trust presented the road - and its designers - with an award for actually enhancing the landscape.

Routes
M6
Tags

Add new comment

About text formats

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
All comments posted to Roads.org.uk are moderated before appearing online. Your comment won't be visible immediately.

Picture credits

"M6 Motorway: Lancaster Bypass to Penrith Bypass" (1970) was subject to Crown Copyright, now expired. Scans appear here courtesy of Mike Ashworth (@mikeashworth12).

In this section

What's new

The forever bottleneck, part 2

The second part of the story, where we learn why exactly the M4 gets narrower on the final approach to Europe’s biggest city.

The forever bottleneck, part 1

The M4 into London was one of the UK's earliest and most ambitious motorway projects. It was bold, pioneering... and almost instantly regretted.

Hello, here's my ridiculous side project

An introduction to what I write, and why I write it, and where my strange new road sign simulator fits in to all this.

Share this page

Have you seen...

Low Emission Zone

A first step towards emissions-based road pricing, a pointless measure to enforce something that's happening anyway, or another leap forward in traffic planning from the people who created the Congestion Charge? It's hard to say.

About this page

Published

Last updated