Swansea driving test centre

There are no A-roads on these loops. That is unusual, and it changes the shape of the test: instead of a faster stretch to settle into, Swansea gives you dock roads, terraced streets and roundabouts, one after another.

Each of the five practice loops on this page carries between three and seven roundabouts in eight to twelve kilometres. Langdon Road and King's Road are the two named ones. Three mini-roundabouts and only thirteen give-way junctions do the rest, which tells you how much of the junction work here is circular rather than stop-and-look.

Thirty-three sets of traffic lights and sixteen signalled crossings sit on the loops. There is a single zebra crossing in the whole drive.

The speeds are slow and evenly split, forty-six per cent of the distance at 20 mph and forty-seven at 30, with a seven per cent stretch at 40.

Five level crossings sit in the area. The dock lines still run across the roads around Langdon Road, Lamberts Road and Port Tennant Road, and a crossing that closes on you mid-test unsettles a candidate who has not met one before.

The residential half of the drive is the streets above the docks: St. Leger Crescent, Beaumont Crescent, Nicander Parade and Grenfell Park Road, with New Cut Road and East Bank Way carrying you between them.

With nine pieces of traffic calming across fifty-one kilometres of loop, this is not a test won or lost on speed humps. It is won on roundabout observation, repeated more times than most centres ask for.