A417 road
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The A417 is a main road in England.
It runs from Streatley at its junction with the A329 (between Reading and Wallingford) to Wantage, over the picturesque Berkshire Downs. In Wantage, it negotiates the market place (around King Alfred's statue and thence to Faringdon, via Stanford in the Vale (speed-limited here to 30 m.p.h.). At Faringdon, its traditional route over Folly Hill and down through the market place has been blocked by the more recent development of the A420. Turning left on the A420 and right at the next roundabout, through Faringdon, leads on to Lechlade, where it crosses the River Thames. It then runs past the Cotswold Water Park, through Fairford to Cirencester and thence to Gloucester and Ledbury, to a point south of Leominster, where it joins the A49.
From the start of the Cirencester bypass to Gloucester, the A417 forms part of a major new dual-carriageway route (A419/A417) connecting the M4 (junction 15) with the M5 at Gloucester (junction 11A). At the A429 roundabout on the older Cirencester bypass, the A417 follows the A429 north for one mile, where it passes a Little Chef, then resumes when it joins the newer bypass (which is also the A417). There is a large BP service station here and a Texaco one further north near a roadside restaurant. The six-mile Cirencester & Stratton Bypass opened on December 9th 1997. This route carries traffic between the ports of the south coast and the industrial Midlands. The four-mile dual-carriageway North of Stratton to Nettleton Improvement opened on January 16th 1998. The roundabout at the end of this section often has congestion during peak hours.
The two-mile £2.4m single-carriageway Birdlip Bypass opened in December 1988. This point, before the Air Balloon roundabout, has a grand vista of the Severn Valley. After the roundabout and the Air Balloon pub, the road turns sharply and there is a dangerously steep gradient. This is a bottleneck at peak times, and there are plans for a dual-carriageway section here in the near future. The three-mile £36m Brockworth Bypass opened in December 1995, and included a new junction 11a of the M5.
Through Gloucester, the road overlaps the A40 Gloucester northern bypass past a large Shell petrol station, and from the end of this bypass, at a roundabout, the road goes north-west through the village of maisemore, past Hartpury College, then through the village Hartpury and then past a BP petrol station. The A417 then passes through the twin villages of Corse and Staunton. It crosses the M50 Ross Spur motorway at junction 2, then meets the Ledbury bypass, where the road noticeably widens out, and has many large roundabouts. Between Gloucester and Ledbury they are many changes of speed limit. From Ledbury, it goes west, overlapping the A438, then at a set of traffic lights next to a Texaco petrol station, known as the Trumpet Crossroad, the road goes north-west along a yet more high-hedged, narrow road. It meets the A49 at a wide junction just south of Leominster, opposite an Esso petrol station and a Little Chef at Hope under Dinmore.
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