Village welcomes new £9m bypass

A long-awaited bypass is being officially opened in Northumberland.

Construction work on the A197 Pegswood bypass, which is a 1.6 mile (2.7km) single carriageway linking Ashington and Morpeth, began in January 2006.

The bypass is expected to reduce the 8,600 vehicles a day that pass through the village by about half.

The chairman of Pegswood Parish Council, Jim Burley, will be the first motorist to use the new bypass on Tuesday morning.

The project has been funded by Northumberland County Council and the Department for Transport.

The new road starts at the top of Whorral Bank outside Morpeth south of its junction with the B1337, and run south of Pegswood to rejoin the A197 near Park Wood.

The route includes a new bridge, made out of the same weathering steel as the Angel of the North, across the main East Coast main line.

Some 500,000 tonnes of earth has been moved during road construction.