Work on a £7 million project to improve the A66 at Bassenthwaite Lake was completed this week.

Highways England began work in September to make the major route more flood resilient.

It included spending £3.7 million to raise two sections of carriageway near Thornthwaite, which were completed on Friday.

Another £1.5 million was spent raising the road at Embleton, alongside Dubwath Beck. That work was completed in February, alongside £600,000 worth of work to realign and raise the westbound carriageway alongside the lake near Smithy Cottage.

Further work to stabilise the rock face along the westbound carriageway to prevent land slippage in severe weather was finished in April at a cost of £1.1 million.

Most of the work was completed by last week but temporary traffic lights were in place at Thornthwaite on Tuesday to allow safety-related finishing work to be completed.

The work comes after the road was affected by flooding in November 2009 and December 2015.

Project manager Peter Gee said: "This is a significant investment in the county’s road network and will provide even greater resilience during severe weather incidents – keeping local people and the economy on the move.

"Working to deliver these improvements at five different sites has been a major engineering and project planning challenge – not least in raising the height of the carriageway by almost 1.5 metres in places.

"We’d like to thank drivers and other local people for their patience over the last 11 months with temporary traffic lights and overnight carriageway closures.

"We hope they’ll appreciate the benefits through many winters to come."

While the work was under way, Highways England also carried out extra resurfacing, to save closing the road again.

Workers cleared 40 tonnes of storm debris from a culvert beneath the road, provided a pedestrian crossing island at the Dubwath crossroads and built a new bus shelter complete with bat roosts.

A lay-by on the eastbound side of the road has also been improved.

A total of 3.2km of carriageway has been resurfaced with 31,000 tonnes of material. Nearly 2km of new safety barriers have been installed, along with 1km of kerbs and drainage.

Six new flood-relief culverts and 800m of filter drain have been provided, with 2,550sqm of netting to prevent rock falls and 250m of rock-filled wall.