M6 motorway from the beginning of A14 in Catthorpe near Rugby in central England, passes between Coventry, Bedworth and Nuneaton, through Birmingham, Walsall and Stafford and near the smaller cities of Wolverhampton and Stoke-on-Trent. The motorway has major junctions with the M55 at Junction 32, north of Preston ending just before Blackpool, the M65 at Junction 29, south of Preston, towards Blackburn and then Burnley, the M56 and M62 at Warrington, giving access to Chester, Manchester and Liverpool. The M6 then heads north past Wigan, Preston and Lancaster. After the latter two cities it passes through Cumbria with some parts very close
M6 motorway to the edge of the Lake District with a short stretch within the national park boundaries and then passes Carlisle on its way to Gretna, before the motorway becomes the A74(M) a few hundred metres (yards) short of the Scottish border. The first section of the motorway and the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass. It was built by Tarmac Construction and opened by the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on 5 December 1958. In January 1959 the Preston by-pass was closed because of rapid surface deterioration over a stretch of "due to water freezing and then thawing".