A38 road

The A38 is a major trunk road running 292 miles from Bodmin in Cornwall to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. Parts of it follow old Roman and Saxon routes, including sections of Icknield Street and a salt road between Worcester and Birmingham. Much of the road runs alongside the M5 motorway, acting as a parallel route for local traffic. In the West Midlands it passes through Bromsgrove, meeting the M42 at Lickey End before heading into Birmingham. The Aston Expressway section becomes a motorway through the city centre, ending at the Gravelly Hill Interchange. This road carries holiday traffic to Devon and Cornwall and carries local journeys across the Midlands. The Devon Expressway section between Plymouth and Exeter was built in the 1970s and forms the southern edge of Dartmoor National Park. It includes a three-level stacked roundabout near Plymouth and the Plympton bypass with its 1996 bridge slide. Trago Mills and Endsleigh Garden Centre lie beside the route, which once had direct access from the dual carriageway. The road shows layers of transport history. Viaducts over the River Plym date from 1969–70, later replaced in a record-breaking sideways slide. The Kennford bypass uses an old 1930s alignment upgraded to dual carriageway in the 1960s. Between Exeter and Plymouth the route crosses the Totnes to Ashburton railway line and climbs Haldon Hill with a steady 1 in 20 gradient. Near Birmingham it briefly merges with the A4040 Ring Road before becoming the Aston Expressway.