Will the A66 and M6 works stop you getting to the Lakes?

The A66 works are east of Penrith

The A66 Northern Trans-Pennine scheme runs between the M6 at Penrith and A1(M) at Scotch Corner. That is the road towards the A1 and the north-east. The A66 west of Penrith — Penrith, Threlkeld, Keswick, the road most people picture when they hear “A66 and the Lake District” — is not in the scheme.

Our own bus corridors show the geography. The two services that use the A66 out of Penrith run west, into the fells; counted from the stop coordinates we hold, 0 of their 192 stops lie east of Penrith.

A stop counts as east of Penrith when it lies east of the town’s eastern edge. The scheme’s western end is the M6 itself, so Penrith sits between the motorway and the works.

The scheme has planning consent (its Development Consent Order was approved on 7 March 2024) and was confirmed as a Government priority in July 2025; the construction schedule is to be set out in the next Road Investment Strategy. No start date has been announced, and this page will not guess one.

Checked against National Highways on 5 September 2026. Dates on schemes like this move; the page is re-checked with every build.

What does change: arriving from the A1 and the north-east

If you reach the Lakes from the A1(M) — Teesside, Tyneside, the North York Moors side of the country — the A66 between Scotch Corner and Penrith is your road, and during construction it will be a road with works on it. When the schedule is published, that is the journey to plan around. From the M6, from the south, and from the west, nothing on the A66 scheme is on your way.

The one to diarise: M6 junctions 37 and 38, from spring 2027

National Highways is renewing 7 bridges on a six-mile stretch of the M6 between junctions 37 and 38, in the Lune Gorge. The main works run spring 2027 to summer 2031, with contraflow running on the M6 while the bridge decks are replaced. As we write, the delivery method is under review and a non-statutory public consultation of at least six weeks is to follow; no closure of junction 38 has been announced, and any reporting that gives one is ahead of the scheme page.

Junction 38 is Tebay: the approach to the Howgills, not to the Lake District. Of the M6 junctions our pages name for getting to the fells, 40 (Penrith, Ullswater, the A66 west), 39 (Shap), 37 (Kendal, Windermere) and 36 are the ones that matter, and none of them is inside the works. What the works do change is a drive through the gorge: coming south from Carlisle or Scotland to Kendal and Windermere, you will pass through the contraflow between 38 and 37 once the main works begin. From the south you will not.

Nearer term, and real: asbestos removal and coating work to the undersides of the Tebay and Borrowbeck bridges, from 7 September 2026 until the end of November 2026. Bridge-underside work rather than lane closures on the carriageway, on the scheme page’s account; check it if you are passing that way.

Checked against National Highways on 5 September 2026. Dates on schemes like this move; the page is re-checked with every build.

What is unaffected

• Junction 40 for Penrith, Ullswater and Keswick. The A66 west of the M6 is outside the scheme.
• Junction 36 and, from the south, junction 37 for Kendal, Windermere and the southern fells.
• The buses. The X4, X5 and 509 run west from Penrith; the 555, 599 and 505 run from Kendal and Windermere. None of them uses the A66 east of Penrith or the M6 through the Lune Gorge.

Sources

• National Highways — A66 Northern Trans-Pennine, checked 5 September 2026.
• National Highways — M6 Lune Gorge structures, checked 5 September 2026.
• Bus stop positions: our own data/bus-stops.json, from the DfT Bus Open Data Service.

Every figure above is read from a data file that records when it was checked and where; nothing is typed into the page. If National Highways’ pages change, the figures here are wrong until the file is re-checked, and the provenance lines say when that was.