We’re all guilty of it: cooing over glass-smooth Alpine passes and stretches of notionally empty autobahn while failing to appreciate that some of the planet’s most captivating roads lurk on our doorstep. No, not J1-J2 of the M1 at 3am: Ireland.

Going for a spin in England and Wales purely for the thrill, joy or hell of it has become a faff. (I’m excluding Scotland here because, in general, it’s still superb.) With 40 million licensed vehicles out there, the sheer volume of traffic is problematic.

Then there’s your friend and mine, the Jenoptik Vector P2P. These lurid yellow, high-resolution average-speed cameras are not only commonly seen on the motorways but are now increasingly dotted along some of our country’s most scenic routes.

I’m not condoning speeding here; what I’m saying is that it’s damned near impossible to enjoy the ebb and flow of a good road when you are under constant scrutiny, which is distracting even when you’re not driving in a manner your mother would disapprove of.

As for potholes, we have plenty of those, but they’re a universal evil. On a recent US launch, one of Bentley’s comms chaps rued the fact two hugely expensive 23in rims ‘wouldn’t be coming home’. This on day one of a three-week event.

So, Ireland – both Northern and the Republic of. My eyes were opened to the delights of the latter in 2018 on the launch of the tweaked Mazda MX-5 (when the 2.0-litre engine went to 7000rpm). The back roads of Fermanagh (and of Leitrim and Donegal just over the border) were close to the Platonic ideal of a B-road. 

They were well sighted despite their teasing, undulating, rollercoaster topography. They were well surfaced. They had really great rhythm. And they were quieter than expected. Google tells me England’s population density is 434 people per square kilometre.

That figure is 141 in Northern Ireland and 77 in the Republic (both are lower than that of Wales, too). So whoever it was in the Mazda press office that made the call to head west instead of to Spain or Sicily, well played.

Recently I found myself back in Ireland, this time bound for the south-west, in a personal capacity – a prenuptial rendezvous in delightful Dingle, home of Fungie the dolphin who lost his pod and an implausibly large number of drinking establishments.

Most of the guys turned to Michael O’Leary to get them to Limerick and ended up hiring Hyundai Tucsons from there. With the new BMW M4 CS in for its road test that week, and in on-brand green, fate was a bit kinder to me. I collected a friend who lives in Pembrokeshire and we took the ferry to Rosslare. 

We made for Killarney the day before the official itinerary commenced. This gave us time to explore the Ring of Kerry and experience for ourselves what are supposed to be some of the most heavenly roads in all Ireland – and, we therefore surmised, the world.