A420 road
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| A420 road | |
| Direction | east/west |
| Start | Old Market Street, Bristol |
| Primary destinations1 |
Chippenham Swindon |
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| End | Headington in Oxford |
| Roads joined |  A4044 road A4320 road A431 road A4017 road A4174 road A4175 road A46 road
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The A420 is a road between Bristol and Oxford in England.
Beginning on Old Market Street near the centre of Bristol, it passes through Kingswood before leaving the city on the East side. From here it travels eastward over limestone country, to the north of Bath, to Chippenham in Wiltshire. As a result of the building of the M4 motorway and subsequent road modernisation, it has lost its identity to the B4069 through Sutton Benger and to the North of RAF Lyneham and its limestone ridge.
At Lyneham, it picks up the A3102 (this stretch was formerly called the A420 as well, but was renumbered) northeast to Swindon. Leaving Swindon by way of Stratton St Margaret, it crosses the A419 to travel under the Great Western Main Line at the Acorn Bridge and by-pass Shrivenham (the road originally went through Shrivenham, but the by-pass was built in the mid 1980s) and Watchfield, then on towards Faringdon in the Vale of White Horse. A new section by-passes Faringdon, just south of Folly Hill and crosses the A417.
The A420 then travels the corallian limestone ridge that forms the Northwest border of the Vale of White Horse, travelling past Littleworth, Buckland and Longworth. A new dual-carriageway section by-passes Southmoor and Kingston Bagpuize, on its way to Oxford.
A further dual-carriageway section descends Cumnor Hill, to give a view of the "City of Dreaming Spires" that is Oxford from the west. It then passes the Oxford Ring Road, through the suburb of Botley and down the Botley Road to central Oxford. Within Oxford, Oxpens, then Thames Street, parts of St Aldate's then the High Street, which is closed to most motor traffic.[1] The road then crosses Magdalen Bridge to St Clements and East Oxford and ascends the notoriously steep Headington Hill to the suburb of Headington before terminating at the Green Road roundabout.
Large vehicles such as lorries are advised by large signs at Oxford and Swindon not to take this route and use the alternative A34, from Junction 13 of the M4. However, this advice is frequently ignored, resulting in very slow moving traffic on an already busy route.
[edit] Site of Fastest Speeding Ticket
The A420 in Oxfordshire was the site of the crime of the fastest driver ever caught in a routine speed check in the UK. On 27 January 2007, Timothy Brady, a 33 year-old man from Harrow in London, was clocked at 172 miles per hour (277 kilometers per hour, or 77 meters per second) in a Porsche 911 Turbo that he had taken without permission from his employer, a luxury car hire firm.[2] On 24 September 2007, Brady was disqualified from driving and sentenced to 10 weeks in jail.
[edit] References
- ^ Email from Oxfordshire County Council Highways, 23 October 2007
- ^ BBC article about 172 mph speeding ticket
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