When thinking about our Summer holiday this year, there was just one destination on my list: Ireland. I’ve wanted to visit this country since I first saw the film P.S. I love you on a plane back home from a visit to the Philippines at the start of 2010. And I was supposed to spend some time on the Emerald Isle only a year later. I had it all planned out: I would go on a solo adventure for ten days, flying into Dublin, then travelling to Galway and Cork by train. The only thing I hadn’t done was book my tickets. And then, I ran into the love of my life, and my daydreams of Ireland went out the window. Oh well, I was young and in love.

However, I never let him forget about my derailed travel plans in all those years we’ve been together. And even though we’ve seen so much of the world since, Ireland remained uncharted territory. So, this year, I gave my husband no choice and unilaterally decided that we were going camping in Ireland. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to care about where we’re going all that much anyway.

Since our point of departure had changed since I drafted the original plans, and we now have a car, I started planning our adventure from scratch. Our journey started in Aberdeenshire, from where we drove diagonally through Scotland to the Southwest. From there, we took a ferry to a small town just above Belfast, drove counterclockwise along the coast down to Clifden, and diagonally through the country back to Belfast. And although the journey was beautiful, I’m not sure I would go back to Ireland. It wasn’t just one specific thing, but from feeling unsafe at campsites and the underwhelming food to the general unkindness of people, I’ve never been so happy to go home again.

That being said, if Ireland is on your wishlist, don’t let me stop you from going. My opinion is just that: an opinion. And if you go, you might as well have a look at my wander guide at the bottom of this post because I didn’t hate the things we did.