Derby sits around 14 miles west of Nottingham, linked by the A52 Brian Clough Way — the dual carriageway named after the manager who took charge of both Derby County and Nottingham Forest, running from Pentagon Island in Derby’s city centre out to the Queen’s Medical Centre roundabout in Nottingham. For a Derby-based learner, that road is usually the first properly fast dual carriageway you’ll drive, and Pentagon Island itself, a multi-lane gyratory feeding several A-roads at once, is one of the trickier roundabouts we cover early.
Inside the city, Derby’s compact inner ring road, St Alkmunds Way (A601), loops the centre in under two and a half miles and packs a lot of lane discipline and quick decisions into a small space. Further out, the A38 through Derby is currently part of a long-running National Highways scheme rebuilding the Kingsway and Markeaton roundabouts, so lesson routes near those junctions shift as the roadworks progress. Out towards Burnaston on the same road, shift changes at the Toyota plant add predictable surges of traffic at set times of day.
Derby is also a university city — close to 19,000 students at the University of Derby, whose main Kedleston Road campus sits opposite Markeaton Park, right by that A38 building work. Head the other way and the roads change character fast: the A6 runs north out of the centre along the Derwent Valley through Duffield and Belper towards Matlock, trading roundabouts and traffic lights for narrower, hillier roads at the edge of the Peak District.