Aylesbury Roadworks: Blackgrove Shut Again to 8 October

Three new closures start on Monday 28 September, all of them west or north of the town.

Blackgrove Road at Waddesdon shuts again from Monday 28 September to Thursday 8 October, this time 7am to 7pm on weekdays only. Waddesdon is about five miles north-west of Aylesbury on the A41. The first phase, which shut the road around the clock, finished on Friday 25 September.

Bridgeway in Cuddington closes from 9am to 3pm on Monday 28 September. It then runs under two-way lights 24 hours a day from 29 September to 12 October. Cuddington is about five miles west of Aylesbury, off the A418 to Thame.

On the motorway, the M40 northbound junction 9 entry slip closes from 22.15 on Monday 28 September to 6am. Junction 9 is the one Aylesbury reaches on the A41 through Bicester.

Buckinghamshire Council republished its planned works list on Friday. Its roadworks page now carries the line “Last updated on Friday 25 September”, and we read it again on Sunday 27 September. The council warns on the same page that dates change at short notice for weather and materials.

What is closed in the Aylesbury area now

Addington is about eleven miles north of Aylesbury, just west of Winslow. Saunderton is about eight miles south-west, on the A4010 between Princes Risborough and High Wycombe, so its night closures matter mainly if you drive to Wycombe late.

The scour works at Cuddington are an investigation, not a repair. Scour is the wearing away of ground around a bridge’s foundations by flowing water, and the council’s entry says only that it is investigating. It does not say what it expects to find.

Three jobs on last week’s version of this page have now gone from the council’s list:

• London Road, Buckingham, where the ironworks ran to Saturday 26 September
• phase 1 of Blackgrove Road, the 24-hour closure, which ended on Friday 25 September
• the countywide pedestrian and zebra crossing refresh, listed to 25 September

If signs or cones are still out at any of them, the council asks residents to report the location on FixMyStreet.

Note what the table does not cover. The council’s list does not include utility company works, so water, gas and broadband digs are permitted separately and only appear on the interactive map. A street that looks clear here can still be dug up. You can set up alerts on One.Network for routes you use often, which is the only way to see everything in one place.

The fortnight ahead, road and rail

The M40: two slip roads at Aylesbury’s junctions

Two nights in the latest National Highways report take in the junctions Aylesbury uses. The town joins the M40 at junction 8a, reached on the A418 through Thame, and at junction 9, reached on the A41 through Bicester.

Monday night is the one for anyone heading north late. The carriageway stays open, but you cannot join it northbound at junction 9. National Highways lists a signed diversion “via National Highways network” and does not give the route in the report.

Thursday night affects the drive home. The southbound exit at junction 8a is the one you take from Birmingham or Banbury for the A418 to Thame and Aylesbury. It is part of a wider job between junctions 9 and 8 with lane closures, and the report again gives only a diversion “via national highways network”. Coming off earlier at junction 9 and taking the A41 through Bicester avoids it.

The M40 northbound closure between junctions 9 and 10 on Wednesday 23 September, the headline on last week’s version of this page, has been and gone.

National Highways publishes the detail as a spreadsheet download from its road closure report page, and the link changes each time, so it has to be taken from that page rather than bookmarked. The file used here covers Friday 25 September to Thursday 1 October. Its front page adds: “Understandably plans can sometimes change, and it is for this reason we recommend you regularly visit the webpage to view the most up-to-date closure list.”

Five rail dates before the end of October

Most of what is on the Aylesbury line is late evening. The exceptions are two Wembley match days.

• Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 September. Maintenance at Aylesbury closes the railway between Aylesbury and Aylesbury Vale Parkway after 22.45, with buses between the two stations. (Chiltern Railways, Monday 28 September)
• Wednesday 30 September and Thursday 1 October. Maintenance closes the line between Princes Risborough and Aylesbury after midnight, with buses calling at Little Kimble. (Chiltern Railways, Wednesday 30 September)
• Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October. Oxford-area work closes the railway between Oxford Parkway and Oxford after 22.55 on the Saturday and until 08.35 on the Sunday. Aylesbury services are not affected, but a Bicester Village trip is. (Chiltern Railways, Saturday 3 October)
• Tuesday 6 October. England play Czechia at Wembley, 7.45pm, and it falls on a weekday. (Chiltern Railways, Tuesday 6 October) The changes that touch this line:
• the 07.21 Princes Risborough to Marylebone is cancelled in the morning
• the 17.37 Marylebone to Princes Risborough is cancelled
• the 17.41 and 18.11 Marylebone to Aylesbury via Amersham run with three carriages instead of four
• the 18.30 Marylebone to Aylesbury Vale Parkway leaves at 18.31 with two carriages instead of three
• Sunday 18 October. An NFL game at Wembley, 2.30pm kick-off. The 18.27 and 19.27 Marylebone to Aylesbury are both cancelled. (Chiltern Railways, Sunday 18 October)

Chiltern’s calendar only shows “minor change” or “major change” against a date. The detail sits on a separate page for each day, which is where all of the above comes from. We checked every day from 27 September to 18 October; the days not listed here have no page.

The A41 Woodlands roundabout: the start date has now passed

The single biggest change to driving in Aylesbury over the next year was due to begin this month, and there is still nothing new on the record.

The council’s project page continues to give mid-September 2026 as the start of main construction works, with completion in summer 2027. Checked again on 27 September, with mid-September gone, it carries no progress update and no traffic management plan. (Buckinghamshire Council project page)

The work is being carried out by Taylor Wimpey rather than the council, as part of the Hampden Fields development. Planning approval came in February 2026, the project started in April and equipment went to site in May. What is being built at the junction of Aston Clinton Road, Aylesbury Road and the A41 dual carriageway:

• the current Woodlands roundabout is demolished
• a hamburger-style roundabout is built in its place, around three times larger
• Aston Clinton Road is widened
• the new Southern Link Road into Hampden Fields is created
• the overhead electricity cables to the south of the road go underground

The A41 east is the town’s only dual carriageway out and its main strategic link, so this is the scheme most likely to affect your journey between now and next summer. The council refers all enquiries about it to Taylor Wimpey.

The routes that carry the town

Practically, that means four things worth knowing before you set off.

East is the fast way out. The A41 toward Aston Clinton and Tring is dual carriageway and the town’s main strategic link. West on the A418 to Thame and the M40 is single carriageway most of the way.

The A413 does two jobs. It runs north from Aylesbury to Winslow and Buckingham and south to Wendover and Amersham, and both halves carry commuter traffic at the same time of day.

The A4010 south has changed shape. The Stoke Mandeville Relief Road realigned it, and the first section of the new link road opened alongside it in November 2025.

Buckingham looks north, not south. Its road traffic runs to Milton Keynes on the A421 rather than to Aylesbury, which is one reason the two halves of this district behave like separate places.

The link road that is supposed to finish this autumn

The South East Aylesbury Link Road (SEALR) is the biggest change to the road network here in years, and the council’s project page still gives its completion date as autumn 2026. That is now.

It is 1.1 miles of dual carriageway joined by three roundabouts, forming part of what the council calls the Aylesbury Orbital Link Road. Phase 1 runs from the B4443 Lower Road to the A413 Wendover Road and includes a road bridge over the Aylesbury to Marylebone railway line. Phase 2 adds about 500 metres of dual carriageway and a roundabout connecting the Stoke Mandeville Relief Road to a future South West Aylesbury Link Road.

The council’s list of completed work on phase 1 now includes the eastern side of the Wendover Road roundabout and the Thames Water trunk main diversion. What it lists as still to come on phase 1 is the part that decides the opening date:

• ground improvement works between Wendover Road and the railway
• sheet piling either side of the railway
• connecting the Lower Road roundabout to the existing Lower Road carriageways
• completing the mainline drainage between the Lower Road roundabout and the new flood alleviation pond west of the railway

Sheet piling either side of the railway is the stage before the bridge, and it is still listed as a next step with autumn already here. That list had not changed when we checked it again on 27 September. Phase 2 is further back again: the council puts its own Thames Water trunk main diversion at “approximately 60% complete”, and its next steps are completing the earthworks, starting the drainage pipes and starting pavement construction.

The dates behind it: the project started in June 2016, main line construction began in February 2023, and approval to build every element of both phases was granted in autumn 2024. The first section opened in November 2025 alongside the Stoke Mandeville Relief Road. The council has not moved the autumn 2026 date, and it runs a project newsletter you can sign up to on the same page.

HS2 in the north of the county

HS2 Phase 1 runs about 60 kilometres through Buckinghamshire, and the heaviest construction in this district has been around Calvert, north-west of Aylesbury. The council is blunt about its own position: the HS2 Rail Act 2017 granted outline planning permission and gives the Secretary of State wide powers, approval “is not to be unreasonably withheld”, and if the council does not respond to an HS2 consent request within the set timescale, approval is deemed granted. In its own words, the council has “little or no power to change aspects of the scheme”.

The route to Manchester was cancelled in October 2023 and the eastern leg earlier than that, so the line now stops at Birmingham. The construction traffic through the north of the vale does not.

What it means for you

• Waddesdon is still the closure that will not go away. Blackgrove Road shuts again from Monday, 7am to 7pm on weekdays, until Thursday 8 October. Evenings and weekends are open.
• Cuddington drivers get lights for a fortnight. Bridgeway is shut from 9am to 3pm on Monday, then on two-way lights around the clock to 12 October.
• Monday night, you cannot join the M40 northbound at junction 9. The entry slip is shut from 22.15 to 6am, with a signed diversion.
• Thursday night, come off at junction 9. The southbound exit at junction 8a is shut from 22.15, so the A418 route home through Thame is not available from the motorway.
• Late trains home stop short four nights running. Monday and Tuesday after 22.45 there are buses between Aylesbury and Aylesbury Vale Parkway; Wednesday and Thursday after midnight there are buses from Princes Risborough.
• Tuesday 6 October is the one to plan for. The Wembley match falls on a weekday, two Princes Risborough trains are cancelled and three Aylesbury departures run a carriage short.

Checking before you travel

• Buckinghamshire Council roadworks and closures for current and planned works, including utility company digs. Search by postcode and switch between current and planned.
• One.Network to set alerts for a route you drive regularly, such as a commute or a school run.
• Chiltern’s changes calendar before any evening trip to London. Event days at Wembley change the Aylesbury timetable more often than engineering work does.
• The National Highways closure report for the M40 and the A41, downloadable as a spreadsheet, with a new list published each day.
• FixMyStreet to report roadwork signs left behind after the work has finished, which the council asks residents to do.

More Aylesbury local information: trains to London, house prices, planning news and things to do in Aylesbury.

Correction, 23 September 2026: a correction note added to this page on 19 September was itself wrong, and has been withdrawn. It said that our earlier statement about the 23.16 Marylebone to Aylesbury via High Wycombe leaving five minutes earlier, at 23.11, was a misreading of a notice about a different train. Chiltern’s daily pages for 21, 22 and 23 September in fact list both changes: the 23.11 Marylebone to Oxford and Banbury leaves later, at 23.16, and separately the 23.16 Marylebone to Aylesbury via High Wycombe leaves earlier, at 23.11. The original statement was correct and has been restored.