{"id":34,"date":"2026-04-21T17:40:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/?p=34"},"modified":"2026-04-21T17:40:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:40:35","slug":"the-westbury-infinite-gyration-the-magic-roundabout-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/?p=34","title":{"rendered":"The Westbury &#8220;Infinite Gyration&#8221; \u2013 The Magic Roundabout 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a move designed to &#8220;harmonize&#8221; the arrival of 8,500 new luxury semi-detached homes on the town\u2019s southern edge, the <strong>Westbury Town Planning Committee<\/strong> has officially opened the <strong>A350 &#8220;Mystical Hex-About.&#8221;<\/strong> Bypassing the standard &#8220;Swindon-style&#8221; Magic Roundabout as being &#8220;too straightforward and lacking in Wiltshire whimsy,&#8221; the new junction at the <strong>Warminster Road<\/strong> intersection consists of one giant central roundabout containing six smaller roundabouts, which in turn contain twelve &#8220;mini-micro-dots.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The &#8220;Suburban Sprawl&#8221; Solution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The project was necessitated by the new <strong>&#8220;White Horse View&#8221; housing estate<\/strong>, a development so vast that its furthest residents are technically closer to Frome than to the <strong>Westbury Railway Station<\/strong>. To ensure these new residents can join the 8:00 AM gridlock with maximum efficiency, the Council decided that a standard three-exit junction was &#8220;insufficiently bureaucratic.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to the Chief Spatial Flow Officer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;We realized that the only way to accommodate 5,000 extra SUVs is to ensure they never actually leave the junction. By the time a driver navigates the fourth sub-circle, it\u2019s usually time to go home anyway. It\u2019s the ultimate in traffic calming\u2014the traffic isn&#8217;t just calm; it\u2019s trapped.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Features of the Hex-About<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new junction has quickly become a local ecosystem of its own:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>The Inner-Sanctum Services:<\/strong> The central island of the Hex-About is so large it now hosts a pop-up <strong>Greggs<\/strong> and a satellite office for <strong>The Laverton<\/strong>, specifically for people to file missing persons reports for family members who entered the roundabout on Tuesday and haven&#8217;t been seen since.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The Matravers School &#8220;Navigational GCSE&#8221;:<\/strong> Students at nearby <strong>Matravers School<\/strong> have had their PE lessons replaced with &#8220;Roundabout Survival Skills.&#8221; The final exam involves entering the Hex-About on a bicycle and successfully exiting toward <strong>Haynes Road<\/strong> without entering an alternate dimension.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The Gull Toll-Gate:<\/strong> The <strong>Grumpy Seagulls<\/strong> from Edward Street have relocated to the central gantry. They have learned that if they sit on the &#8220;Give Way&#8221; signs, confused drivers from out of town will offer them entire steak bakes just for directions to the <strong>A350 North<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Existential Gridlock<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <strong>Sentient Traffic Light<\/strong> from our earlier stories has reportedly gone into a state of &#8220;digital shock&#8221; at the sight of the Hex-About. It has stopped flashing Morse code and has instead begun projecting a holographic image of a white flag toward the <strong>Horse &amp; Jockey<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One resident from <strong>Westbury Leigh<\/strong>, who has been circling the third sub-roundabout for forty-eight minutes, shouted through his window:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;I only wanted to go to the <strong>Lidl<\/strong>! I\u2019ve passed the entrance to the new &#8216;Meadows&#8217; development six times. I\u2019ve seen three different seasons pass. I think I\u2019m part of the landscaping now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Environmental Impact<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To mitigate the carbon footprint of several thousand idling engines, the Council has installed &#8220;Photosynthetic Tarmac&#8221; which allegedly turns exhaust fumes into the smell of damp chalk and disappointment. Furthermore, the <strong>Bitham Brook<\/strong> has been diverted to create a &#8220;moat&#8221; around the junction, primarily to stop pedestrians from trying to cross the M30-level chaos on foot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Grand Unveiling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The official ribbon-cutting ceremony was performed by the <strong>White Horse<\/strong> (via a very long pair of telescopic scissors). However, the Mayor was unable to actually attend the ceremony as his car got stuck in the &#8220;Dilton Marsh Orbital Slip-Road&#8221; and he ended up in a cul-de-sac in the new <strong>Bratton View<\/strong> estate, where he is currently considering a career in professional hedge-trimming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>If you were stuck in the Westbury Hex-About, which local landmark would you use as a navigational star to find your way home?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a move designed to &#8220;harmonize&#8221; the arrival of 8,500 new luxury semi-detached homes on the town\u2019s southern edge, the Westbury Town Planning Committee has officially&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westburynews.co.uk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}