The A47 is a trunk road in England linking Birmingham to Great Yarmouth (although most of the section between Birmingham and Nuneaton has been reclassified as the B4114).
From west to east, the road goes through:
- Birmingham
- reclassified as B4114
- Nuneaton
- Hinckley
- Earl Shilton
- Leicester
- subsumed into inner ringroad
- Uppingham
- Peterborough
- Wisbech
- King's Lynn
- Dereham
- Norwich
- forms new southern by-pass (previously formed outer ringroad)
- Great Yarmouth
At Nuneaton, the road re-emerges from a junction with the A444, near a BP garage at the Anker service station on Weddington Road. Leaving Nuneaton, it passes a Total garage. It meets the A5 Watling Street, which it follows for a half-mile, then leaves at a roundabout to bypass Hinckley. This section passes through a large industrial estate and close to a Tesco. It passes a large Morrisons store next to a roundabout near Redmoor High School. It passes close to Barwell, then enters Earl Shilton, passing the Heathfield High School Near to the B582 crossroads, there is a BP garage. It enters Leicester Forest East, crossing the M1 near the service station. There is a busy roundabout with the A563 Leicester outer ring-road. It passes a BP garage at the St James service station. Entering the city centre, it crosses the River Soar and the Grand Union Canal. Leaving Leicester, it becomes Humberstone Road, then Uppingham Road. It passes under the Midland Main Line, then passes a Total garage at the St Matthews service station. At Humberstone, just before the A563 junction it passes a Shell garage at the Trocadero service station. At Thurnby, it passes a Texaco garage at Harris Motors.
The road passes through Houghton on the Hill. The two-mile £2.5m Billesdon Bypass opened in October 1986. The transmitter for Leicester Sound is situated here. The one-kilometre £1.2m East Norton Bypass, in Leicestershire, opened in December 1990. The next ten miles are in Rutland. The two-mile £1.9m Wardley Hill Improvement opened in October 1987. The one-and-a-half-mile £1.4m Uppingham Bypass opened in June 1982. This is the home of Uppingham School. At Morcott, there is a popular Little Chef, and a Texaco garage at the Morcott service station. The Duddington Bypass, in Northamptonshire, opened in 1975. The road crosses the River Welland. This section has a busy roundabout where it meets the south-west/north-east corridor A43. From here to the A1, the road goes close to the runway of RAF Wittering, in Cambridgeshire. The dual-carriageway £9m Ailsworth-Castor Bypass opened in September 1991.
Around Peterborough, the Peterborough Longthorpe GSJ opened in December 1987. The £1.2m Peterborough Westwood GSJ opened in January 1987. This section of road is called the Soke Parkway. When this was first built, in the mid-1970s, the A47 followed what is now the A1139 Paston Parkway.
The three-mile £7.2m Eye Bypass opened in October 1991, diverting traffic from the Paston Parkway. A three-mile dual-carriageway bypass of Thorney opened on 14th December 2005. The half-mile £3.7m Guyhirn Diversion opened in October 1990. The five-mile £6m Wisbech/West Walton Bypass opened in Autumn 1984. The six-mile £23m dual-carriageway Walpole Highway/Tilney High End Bypass, in Norfolk, opened in summer 1996.
From Kings Lynn, the road goes over the River Great Ouse, near to some sugar beet factories on a very busy dual-carriageway built in the 1970s. The A17 and A10 have their terminus here, and cause congestion. The half-mile £2.8m Narborough Bypass, in Norfolk, opened in November 1992. The five-mile £5m part-dual-carriageway Swaffham Bypass opened in June 1981. The seven-mile £5m part-dual-carriageway East Dereham Bypass opened in spring 1978, which crosses over a level crossing on the Mid-Norfolk Railway. The three-mile £9m East Dereham-North Tuddenham Improvement opened in August 1992, being built on an old disused railway line. The dual-carriageway £62m Norwich Bypass opened in September 1992. The section from the end of this bypass to Blofield, the one-mile £1.2m Postwick-Blofield Dualling, was opened in November 1987 The one-mile £4m dual-carriageway Blofield Bypass opened in February 1983. The three-mile £7.1m dual-carriageway Acle Bypass opned in March 1989. The northern section of the two-mile £19m Great Yarmouth Western Bypass opened in March 1986, and the southern section opened in May 1985.