Swindon is 81 miles west of London with a population of 155,000. The original Saxon settlement grew into a small market town until 1840 when it was selected to house the main work sheds for the London to Bristol Great Western Railway. A village was built to house railway workers, now known as New Town, but the railway works eventually closed in 1986.

With excellent connections to the M4 motorway many new businesses have located in Swindon. Major employers today include production plants for Honda and BMW, Motorola, Dolby Labs, W H Smith, Intel and Lucent Technologies. Financial houses such as the Nationwide Building Society and Zurich Bank, and pharmaceutical companies Patheon and Cardinal Health also have head offices in the town.

Visiting drivers are bound, at some point, to experience the "Magic Roundabout" near the County Ground, home of Swindon Town F.C. It consists of one large roundabout surrounded by five mini-roundabouts in an innovative system where the traffic flow around the large inner roundabout is anti-clockwise, whereas traffic flows in the usual clockwise manner around the five mini-roundabouts and the outer loop.

All the major shops are found in The Brunel Centre and the Parade in the town centre, while The Link Centre and Oasis offer leisure and health facilities. Swindon has many public parks including Lydiard Country Park, Stanton Park, Barbury Castle, Queens Park and Coate Water.

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