The UK's magic roundabouts, and how to drive them

A magic roundabout is a ring of mini roundabouts round a central island, with traffic going both ways round it. It looks impossible from the air and it is not: each mini is an ordinary give way, so you take them one at a time, give way to the right at each, and choose the shorter way round before you join. Britain has three well-known ones, and each has its own page here built from its real layout.

Junction	Minis	Traffic	Opened
Swindon	5	Two one-way rings: outer clockwise, inner anticlockwise	1972
Hemel Hempstead	6	Two-way roads between the minis	1973
Colchester	5	Two-way roads between the minis	1970s

How to drive any of them

Before you join, pick your exit and the way round that passes fewer minis. In Swindon that means choosing a ring: the outer one runs clockwise, the inner one anticlockwise. In Hemel Hempstead and Colchester the roads between the minis are two-way, so you simply go round either way and keep left. Then treat every mini as its own roundabout. Give way to traffic from your right, signal for that mini's exit, go, cancel the signal as you clear the island and start again at the next one. Nothing about the rule changes; only the number of times you apply it does.

Which is the scariest?

Swindon's is the famous one and regularly tops "scariest junction" polls; Hemel Hempstead's has one more mini; Colchester's is the least known. All three are the same skill. Try the free route explorer on each page, then drive it in 3D with traffic that repeats exactly until it stops feeling like a puzzle.