The A38 Canal Crossing

A38 Canal Roundabout

The start or the end?

I came back today from Stroud by bicycle and it game me a chance to get off and see the finished A38 roundabout complete with Canal. You may remember that I wrote a while back about the “Missing Mile” . So it’s good to see the A38 Canal roundabout to nowhere finished.

The A38 Roundabout — Looking from the field into the new canal cutting through the roundabout

Nowhere to go?

Scrambling down from the road to the new canal there is no sign of where it will go across the field instead there is only a nice new fence blocking it off. Obviously the new canal is going to be some time a-coming….

At the other end, one can see the old overgrown canal asleep and waiting to be cleared.

The Old Canal — Looking from the new canal cutting into the old overgrown canal

YouTube Video by Gloucestershire Highways

About the scheme

The scheme delivers the construction of the canal through the A38 Whitminster Roundabout. It includes the construction of two new bridges, a canal channel within the roundabout and a towpath under the bridge.

Delivered by GCC as the highways authority through contractors, Alun Griffiths, working closely with Cotswold Canals Trust, Highways England and Stroud District Council.

The canal at this location was originally crossed by the Bristol Road (now A38) on a stone arched bridge. The lock and the bridge were both destroyed at the time the A419 link road was built in conjunction with the building of the M5 in or around 1969. The entire canal from the point where the surviving canal approaches the A38 Whitminster roundabout to Westfield Lock was obliterated – a distance of about a mile, the so called ‘missing mile’.

More information: Cotswold Canals