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Welcome to Top Gear's lap of Ireland

Join us as we lap the Emerald Isle, from the coast of Antrim to the Ring of Kerry

  • DUBLIN - LONDONDERRY

    ROADS IN THE 4TH DIMENSION. THE ANTRIM COAST ROAD. A LETHAL TORR

    "A decent hot hatch will beat a supercar down a typical B-road". As a statement of fact, it's a load of rubbish. Even the most anaemic of super-sports cars will eat a hot hatch for breakfast down pretty much any road, because that's what they do for a living. Supercars, as the name would suggest, are generally very fast indeed. What might be more appropriate to suggest is that there are cars that are much more fun down a typical B-road than a mid-engined, 200mph monster with suspension nicked wholesale from a Le Mans car, whose hips brush the hedges and whose insurance value is somewhere north of everything we will ever earn. This makes sense. And so, in typical TopGear fashion, to test the theory we've come to Ireland, an island composed pretty much entirely of B-roads, in a supercar - a McLaren 12C Spider with 616bhp, rear-wheel drive and worth nearly a quarter of a million pounds - to see how little fun you can really not have down a B-road in a supercar. There's logic in there somewhere.

    First, we ferry. The 12C is packed literally to the rafters with kit and managed - to everyone's surprise - to swallow two men with photography equipment and spare underwear. A slight dice with the loading ramp of the Irish Ferries hydrofoil bodes well, and before too long we're in the Emerald Isle, armed with a load of suggestions for decent roads and a positive attitude. Dublin, fine city that it is, is a bit too urban for our purposes, and so we hook the E01/M1 north towards Swords and Drogheda. I have a road in mind that I want to drive before it gets dark, so we impolitely belt up past Belfast and track out east on the A2 towards Larne.

    Now, above Larne is a little squiggle called simply the Coast Road, which I'd seen on the interweb as part of the thing called the Ulster Rally. It looked dangerous, and bouncy, with the cars spending as much time off the ground as on it - especially up past Glenarm and the Garron Road, and a little detour called the Torr, which is kind of a sneaky right at a place called Cushendun. It took us a couple of hours to get there, but when we did... we discovered a beautiful coastal sweep full of road-based lies. And I'm not talking about little white lies, like looking smoother than they really are - which they aren't, incidentally - but huge great whopping porkies. The Torr road section especially is a place where there's not very much traffic, but a seeming half-mile straight will develop, instantly and alarmingly, to contain both a hidden 30ft dip and a 90-degree left-right combo, which will somehow also sprout a tiny trollish humpback bridge with a cheerful warning sign that you see just as you leave the ground.

    The white line in the middle of the road? In most places, it indicates the two sides of a carriageway, but seeing as these roads are only about one and a half McLarens wide (a metric based on the fact that the Spider isn't actually very big for a car of this performance), it's bugger all use when it comes to meeting other traffic. False sense of security. Think of them more as a loose guide as to where the road might be going. Actually, use anything you can, because these Irish country lanes are essentially dimension-busting stretches that contain too many planes of existence to qualify as strictly standard physical. On one bit, there's a downhill section on the side of a hill/cliff that throws in a kind of uphill corkscrew that varies the camber between the two sections across the beam of the corner. So, just as you think there's helpful, friendly lean, it drops away to be murderous evil camber, at which point the corner swaps direction anyway, and you're left a little wild-eyed and thankful for ceramic brakes and stability control. There's no run-off, no gravel trap and no mercy. No wonder Ireland generates such exceptional road racing talent - if you haven't learned to think fast around here, you'd be rolling downhill faster than you can swear. These are not roads to be taken lightly.

    Lightly chastised, we head up past Ballycastle, get lost near Bushmills (this will prove to be a theme), head down around Portrush and run the A2 into Derry/Londonderry for an early night. This all looks very promising.

    Words: Tom Ford
    Pictures: Justin Leighton 

    This feature first appeared in Top Gear magazine

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  • DUBLIN - LONDONDERRY

    ROADS IN THE 4TH DIMENSION. THE ANTRIM COAST ROAD. A LETHAL TORR

    "A decent hot hatch will beat a supercar down a typical B-road". As a statement of fact, it's a load of rubbish. Even the most anaemic of super-sports cars will eat a hot hatch for breakfast down pretty much any road, because that's what they do for a living. Supercars, as the name would suggest, are generally very fast indeed. What might be more appropriate to suggest is that there are cars that are much more fun down a typical B-road than a mid-engined, 200mph monster with suspension nicked wholesale from a Le Mans car, whose hips brush the hedges and whose insurance value is somewhere north of everything we will ever earn. This makes sense. And so, in typical TopGear fashion, to test the theory we've come to Ireland, an island composed pretty much entirely of B-roads, in a supercar - a McLaren 12C Spider with 616bhp, rear-wheel drive and worth nearly a quarter of a million pounds - to see how little fun you can really not have down a B-road in a supercar. There's logic in there somewhere.

    First, we ferry. The 12C is packed literally to the rafters with kit and managed - to everyone's surprise - to swallow two men with photography equipment and spare underwear. A slight dice with the loading ramp of the Irish Ferries hydrofoil bodes well, and before too long we're in the Emerald Isle, armed with a load of suggestions for decent roads and a positive attitude. Dublin, fine city that it is, is a bit too urban for our purposes, and so we hook the E01/M1 north towards Swords and Drogheda. I have a road in mind that I want to drive before it gets dark, so we impolitely belt up past Belfast and track out east on the A2 towards Larne.

    Now, above Larne is a little squiggle called simply the Coast Road, which I'd seen on the interweb as part of the thing called the Ulster Rally. It looked dangerous, and bouncy, with the cars spending as much time off the ground as on it - especially up past Glenarm and the Garron Road, and a little detour called the Torr, which is kind of a sneaky right at a place called Cushendun. It took us a couple of hours to get there, but when we did... we discovered a beautiful coastal sweep full of road-based lies. And I'm not talking about little white lies, like looking smoother than they really are - which they aren't, incidentally - but huge great whopping porkies. The Torr road section especially is a place where there's not very much traffic, but a seeming half-mile straight will develop, instantly and alarmingly, to contain both a hidden 30ft dip and a 90-degree left-right combo, which will somehow also sprout a tiny trollish humpback bridge with a cheerful warning sign that you see just as you leave the ground.

    The white line in the middle of the road? In most places, it indicates the two sides of a carriageway, but seeing as these roads are only about one and a half McLarens wide (a metric based on the fact that the Spider isn't actually very big for a car of this performance), it's bugger all use when it comes to meeting other traffic. False sense of security. Think of them more as a loose guide as to where the road might be going. Actually, use anything you can, because these Irish country lanes are essentially dimension-busting stretches that contain too many planes of existence to qualify as strictly standard physical. On one bit, there's a downhill section on the side of a hill/cliff that throws in a kind of uphill corkscrew that varies the camber between the two sections across the beam of the corner. So, just as you think there's helpful, friendly lean, it drops away to be murderous evil camber, at which point the corner swaps direction anyway, and you're left a little wild-eyed and thankful for ceramic brakes and stability control. There's no run-off, no gravel trap and no mercy. No wonder Ireland generates such exceptional road racing talent - if you haven't learned to think fast around here, you'd be rolling downhill faster than you can swear. These are not roads to be taken lightly.

    Lightly chastised, we head up past Ballycastle, get lost near Bushmills (this will prove to be a theme), head down around Portrush and run the A2 into Derry/Londonderry for an early night. This all looks very promising.

    Words: Tom Ford
    Pictures: Justin Leighton 

    This feature first appeared in Top Gear magazine

  • DERRY - WESTPORT

    SNOW. THE WILD ATLANTIC WAY. I WANT TO BE IRISH

    We awake to find the 12C Spider covered in ice and bound tight by freezing temperatures, so obviously drop the roof for fun and showing-off purposes. A process immediately and embarrassingly reversed some two miles later as we are battered by hailstones the size of marbles, which turn the road white in seconds and remove any vestige of traction offered even by our winter tyres. OK, Ireland, so that's how it's going to be. We hook the N13 down to Letterkenny, and the N56 up to Dunfanaghy, sweeping down through Gweedore, Dungloe and Ardara. We get lost again somewhere around a village called Glencolumbkille, and marvel at the beginnings of the Wild Atlantic Way, a tourist route that hugs the western side of the island. This is raw coastline, untamed and angry. But far from being uninhabited, everywhere you go, there are bungalows. Pebbledashed little prefabs that stand in front of the hollowed-out shells of beautiful old stone houses. Strange. It's like having access to a Georgian mansion, and choosing to live in a caravan in the front garden. The roads are incredibly technical, tight and largely deserted. Full of dips and crests and bumps. So far, there has been rain, sunshine, snow, hail and sleet. And it's only just after lunch. Somewhere near Sligo, we are ambushed by a pair of suicidal horses, who veer off at the sight of a bright yellow McLaren into someone's front garden. No one seems to think this is odd. We head out to the Ballycroy National Park just as night falls, and the light traffic simply evaporates. So we let the 12C have its head, the lights picking out the road like beacons. And the whole supercar on a B-road lie becomes crystal. The McLaren has one of the noisiest suspension systems I've ever encountered, but when you really start to force it to react by giving it something to do, it finds sinew and spring where you might expect wood and splinters.

    Now, some supercars suit race tracks, growing in stature when allowed to work with a regulation airflow and smooth surface, translating a track's subtle conversation into a multi-layered debate filled with texture and information. They put up with roads, cope, but never really feel at home with all the inevitable mess of the real. If you chuck in a few irregular bumps or standing water, they skip and shimmy, and react like a tantrum-bound 14-year-old: from zero to apocalypse in the blink of an eye. The McLaren 12C doesn't do that.

    Going really quite quickly sometime after 9pm, in the dark, with rain gushing like the sky has severed an artery, the Spider comes alive.

    The big trick is the suspension and steering. The 12C does not bounce, and goes where - exactly where - you point it. In some cars, the suspension can feel stiff and well-damped, but it's like the front suspension engineers only had a nodding relationship with those responsible for the back.

    In the McLaren, the suspension is resolved front-to-back and side-to-side, so that when you hit a bump on the left-hand side of the car, that happens to be on top of a small crest when you're about to turn into a sharp right - all perfectly feasible in Ireland - the 12C just kind of flumps down and remains calm. It's essentially like dropping a beanbag on the floor. It doesn't pop back up, or buck or lose composure if you hit several bumps in a row, because you can never quite knock the wind out of the suspension and damping, no matter how hard you try. It always, somehow, manages to breathe. Which obviously makes it fast. Contact breeds grip, grip begets familiarity, and familiarity - in my case, at least - is the father of confidence, who, as it turns out, is the brother-in-law of speed.

    So I'd like to say that it's all about that feel through the steering, and knowing where the limit of grip really is that makes this car so fast. Something clever, that makes it sound like I'm somehow coaxing a secret from this machine that nobody else can really access. But you can get that sort of thing from, say, a Toyota GT86 for a tenth of the price and with less than a third of the horsepower. Where the supercar really makes its point is the reality that the grip and poise is merely the cherry on the cake made of a 616bhp twin-turbo V8. And anyone can access that. You just plant your foot, and watch the world fall over. Hot hatch beat a supercar? My arse. We arrive in the lovely little village of Westport with me bouncing around like a loon and Justin the photographer staring straight ahead and refusing to speak. I must stop doing this to him.

    Advertisement - Page continues below
  • DERRY - WESTPORT

    SNOW. THE WILD ATLANTIC WAY. I WANT TO BE IRISH

    We awake to find the 12C Spider covered in ice and bound tight by freezing temperatures, so obviously drop the roof for fun and showing-off purposes. A process immediately and embarrassingly reversed some two miles later as we are battered by hailstones the size of marbles, which turn the road white in seconds and remove any vestige of traction offered even by our winter tyres. OK, Ireland, so that's how it's going to be. We hook the N13 down to Letterkenny, and the N56 up to Dunfanaghy, sweeping down through Gweedore, Dungloe and Ardara. We get lost again somewhere around a village called Glencolumbkille, and marvel at the beginnings of the Wild Atlantic Way, a tourist route that hugs the western side of the island. This is raw coastline, untamed and angry. But far from being uninhabited, everywhere you go, there are bungalows. Pebbledashed little prefabs that stand in front of the hollowed-out shells of beautiful old stone houses. Strange. It's like having access to a Georgian mansion, and choosing to live in a caravan in the front garden. The roads are incredibly technical, tight and largely deserted. Full of dips and crests and bumps. So far, there has been rain, sunshine, snow, hail and sleet. And it's only just after lunch. Somewhere near Sligo, we are ambushed by a pair of suicidal horses, who veer off at the sight of a bright yellow McLaren into someone's front garden. No one seems to think this is odd. We head out to the Ballycroy National Park just as night falls, and the light traffic simply evaporates. So we let the 12C have its head, the lights picking out the road like beacons. And the whole supercar on a B-road lie becomes crystal. The McLaren has one of the noisiest suspension systems I've ever encountered, but when you really start to force it to react by giving it something to do, it finds sinew and spring where you might expect wood and splinters.

    Now, some supercars suit race tracks, growing in stature when allowed to work with a regulation airflow and smooth surface, translating a track's subtle conversation into a multi-layered debate filled with texture and information. They put up with roads, cope, but never really feel at home with all the inevitable mess of the real. If you chuck in a few irregular bumps or standing water, they skip and shimmy, and react like a tantrum-bound 14-year-old: from zero to apocalypse in the blink of an eye. The McLaren 12C doesn't do that.

    Going really quite quickly sometime after 9pm, in the dark, with rain gushing like the sky has severed an artery, the Spider comes alive.

    The big trick is the suspension and steering. The 12C does not bounce, and goes where - exactly where - you point it. In some cars, the suspension can feel stiff and well-damped, but it's like the front suspension engineers only had a nodding relationship with those responsible for the back.

    In the McLaren, the suspension is resolved front-to-back and side-to-side, so that when you hit a bump on the left-hand side of the car, that happens to be on top of a small crest when you're about to turn into a sharp right - all perfectly feasible in Ireland - the 12C just kind of flumps down and remains calm. It's essentially like dropping a beanbag on the floor. It doesn't pop back up, or buck or lose composure if you hit several bumps in a row, because you can never quite knock the wind out of the suspension and damping, no matter how hard you try. It always, somehow, manages to breathe. Which obviously makes it fast. Contact breeds grip, grip begets familiarity, and familiarity - in my case, at least - is the father of confidence, who, as it turns out, is the brother-in-law of speed.

    So I'd like to say that it's all about that feel through the steering, and knowing where the limit of grip really is that makes this car so fast. Something clever, that makes it sound like I'm somehow coaxing a secret from this machine that nobody else can really access. But you can get that sort of thing from, say, a Toyota GT86 for a tenth of the price and with less than a third of the horsepower. Where the supercar really makes its point is the reality that the grip and poise is merely the cherry on the cake made of a 616bhp twin-turbo V8. And anyone can access that. You just plant your foot, and watch the world fall over. Hot hatch beat a supercar? My arse. We arrive in the lovely little village of Westport with me bouncing around like a loon and Justin the photographer staring straight ahead and refusing to speak. I must stop doing this to him.

  • WESTPORT - KENMARE

    HURRICANE. CONNEMARA. THE RING OF KERRY. SAGE ADVICE

    We awake to news of extreme weather on our route. "There's some bad weather headed this way, the radio and telly this morning said not to travel that way if you can help it."

    "I'm sure we'll be fine!" I enthuse to the charmingly concerned hotel receptionist, "We do this sort of thing all the time, and we've got winter tyres. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? We get swept away by a freak typhoon?! Ha!"

    Turns out I was right to be sceptical of typhoon-based danger. Typhoons are tropical. Exactly four hours later, a hurricane hit.

    I'm not sure what really happened over the next few hours, except to say that it was an experience I hope never to repeat. Having just traversed the majesty of the Connemara National Park in rain you could chew, the 12C had become something resembling a lifeboat, and the wind had picked up to car-moving strength. The repetitive, semi-rhythmic bounce-and-splash and on-and-off throttle action felt like riding a large yellow jetski across a choppy, narrow fjord. Except with the occasional forestry commission truck passing in the opposite direction, looking a bit confused as to why someone might be driving a bright yellow supercar through remote landscape in what would at best be described as challenging conditions. Clifden and Galway passed with me holding onto the steering wheel with enough force to leave nailmarks, and we whipped back past Limerick and down through Listowel and Tralee barely pausing for breath, and onto the Ring of Kerry with a hurricane over our heads.

    Is it better to extend the aerodynamic pack to full downforce in hurricane conditions or leave as standard? These are the questions you might find yourself asking when you've noticed that high-sided trucks are congregating under any available cover and lashing themselves together. You might also ask yourself why we didn't just, y'know, stop, but that felt like giving up. Also, we'd run out of biscuits somewhere near Portmagee, and I could sense Justin starting to twitch like a biscuit addict.

    Ireland, on the positive side, is reliably intense, and brilliantly rural. Small villages scattered higgledy-piggledy through the scenery, the Atlantic battering the coast with implacable force and infinite variety, the storm above us whipping the clouds into shapes that inspire poets and make farmers cringe. It's a bit like the wildest Highlands of Scotland, with roads that will challenge car and driver. If you think you can turn up here with track-biased suspension and have fun, forget it - these Irish roads will eat you alive. We stop at Kenmare and slump. The storm is still raging.

  • WESTPORT - KENMARE

    HURRICANE. CONNEMARA. THE RING OF KERRY. SAGE ADVICE

    We awake to news of extreme weather on our route. "There's some bad weather headed this way, the radio and telly this morning said not to travel that way if you can help it."

    "I'm sure we'll be fine!" I enthuse to the charmingly concerned hotel receptionist, "We do this sort of thing all the time, and we've got winter tyres. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? We get swept away by a freak typhoon?! Ha!"

    Turns out I was right to be sceptical of typhoon-based danger. Typhoons are tropical. Exactly four hours later, a hurricane hit.

    I'm not sure what really happened over the next few hours, except to say that it was an experience I hope never to repeat. Having just traversed the majesty of the Connemara National Park in rain you could chew, the 12C had become something resembling a lifeboat, and the wind had picked up to car-moving strength. The repetitive, semi-rhythmic bounce-and-splash and on-and-off throttle action felt like riding a large yellow jetski across a choppy, narrow fjord. Except with the occasional forestry commission truck passing in the opposite direction, looking a bit confused as to why someone might be driving a bright yellow supercar through remote landscape in what would at best be described as challenging conditions. Clifden and Galway passed with me holding onto the steering wheel with enough force to leave nailmarks, and we whipped back past Limerick and down through Listowel and Tralee barely pausing for breath, and onto the Ring of Kerry with a hurricane over our heads.

    Is it better to extend the aerodynamic pack to full downforce in hurricane conditions or leave as standard? These are the questions you might find yourself asking when you've noticed that high-sided trucks are congregating under any available cover and lashing themselves together. You might also ask yourself why we didn't just, y'know, stop, but that felt like giving up. Also, we'd run out of biscuits somewhere near Portmagee, and I could sense Justin starting to twitch like a biscuit addict.

    Ireland, on the positive side, is reliably intense, and brilliantly rural. Small villages scattered higgledy-piggledy through the scenery, the Atlantic battering the coast with implacable force and infinite variety, the storm above us whipping the clouds into shapes that inspire poets and make farmers cringe. It's a bit like the wildest Highlands of Scotland, with roads that will challenge car and driver. If you think you can turn up here with track-biased suspension and have fun, forget it - these Irish roads will eat you alive. We stop at Kenmare and slump. The storm is still raging.

  • KENMARE - DUBLIN

    MIZEN HEAD. THE WICKLOW HILLS. A FERRY FULL OF VOMIT

    The next day, we head down the N71 towards Glengarriff and Bantry, and then strike further west to Mizen Head, the most south-westerly point in Ireland, a place where if you pointed your boat out to sea and kept going, you'd probably next encounter land in Puerto Rico. There's nothing there apart from a car park and a closed café, but the clouds make you want to write bad romance novels. I don't know why. The back roads look as if a hurricane has been through them. Which, obviously, it has. Some roads are completely clear; others, scenes of devastation. When a big tree decides to go, it drags with it quite a lot of the surrounding forest, plus a good portion of whatever it can wrap its branches around, like a drunk trying not to fall over, clutching at passers-by. In this instance, the local power and phone lines, which dipped in a sinuous arc through both the puddle we were about to drive through, and about 3ft in the air across the road. This prompted quite a heated and hurried discussion about the height of a McLaren 12C, whether carbon fibre is an excellent insulator or conductor (amazing how easily these two things are forgotten under pressure), and what exactly a phone line looked like, as opposed to say a couple of hundred volts of domestic electricity supply. It's like an episode of The Crystal Maze. Except if we get it wrong, we won't just be locked in a room of cut-price theatrical props, but lightly flambéed in a carbon coffin. At one point, we are hemmed in by not one, but two felled trees, one in front and one recently keeled over behind. In lieu of anything better to do, we sit eating biscuits and try to decide if we could tow a tree with a supercar, when a farmer approaches from across a field in a Hilux.

    "Well, now tharn," he says, looking at the McLaren with an appraising eye, "don't seemlikeyou'llbegoinoveruporaroundthattree, eh?" I stare at him blankly but with expectation, like a labrador that's just been shown a biscuit. "Notwiththatoneanyway, eh?" Still nothing from me. The farmer sighs, looks from me to the McLaren to the 70-foot-long tree across the road, branches splayed for 30 feet or more across the roadway, and sighs, "Love-ly Macalaren. It's just that I'm going to need... a bigger chainsaw" - these last words said with the kind of weary resignation that you get when you've turned up to a large-calibre gunfight waving a teaspoon.

    He returns with several chainsaws and a Kubota digger, and soon enough we're on our way, safe in the knowledge that at least one farmer has enough firewood for the next decade. Then it's past Schull, a trip across a causeway feathered by the froth of the Atlantic, Skibbereen and the N71 through Clonakilty. It was at this point we realised that in our determination to investigate what felt like every geographical oxbow of the Atlantic side, we were about to miss our ferry, so we edited a chunk of the very south of Ireland by heading up the M9 and picking up the Wicklow Mountains National Park as a final flourish. The Wicklow and Sally Gaps - poorly surfaced in places, glorious in others. The browns and greens of the moor, the road sweeping and cutting and endlessly interesting. We got joyfully muddled for a final time, lost for the joy of driving.

    And then, suddenly, it was over. We'd lapped Ireland, covered nearly 2,000 miles of back road and proved that nothing really comes close to a supercar on any kind of road. As long as it's the right kind of supercar, and the right kind of road. Inevitably, we were stopped by the Garda on the way into Dublin on the pretext that they'd "never seen a car like that before", and we were asked where we'd been. "On a Lap of Ireland," I said. "What? All of it, in this weather?" said the Garda, bemusedly. When I replied in the affirmative, he asked how it was.

    "One of the best trips I've ever made," I replied. And when I spoke the words, I realised just how true it was.

    Advertisement - Page continues below
  • KENMARE - DUBLIN

    MIZEN HEAD. THE WICKLOW HILLS. A FERRY FULL OF VOMIT

    The next day, we head down the N71 towards Glengarriff and Bantry, and then strike further west to Mizen Head, the most south-westerly point in Ireland, a place where if you pointed your boat out to sea and kept going, you'd probably next encounter land in Puerto Rico. There's nothing there apart from a car park and a closed café, but the clouds make you want to write bad romance novels. I don't know why. The back roads look as if a hurricane has been through them. Which, obviously, it has. Some roads are completely clear; others, scenes of devastation. When a big tree decides to go, it drags with it quite a lot of the surrounding forest, plus a good portion of whatever it can wrap its branches around, like a drunk trying not to fall over, clutching at passers-by. In this instance, the local power and phone lines, which dipped in a sinuous arc through both the puddle we were about to drive through, and about 3ft in the air across the road. This prompted quite a heated and hurried discussion about the height of a McLaren 12C, whether carbon fibre is an excellent insulator or conductor (amazing how easily these two things are forgotten under pressure), and what exactly a phone line looked like, as opposed to say a couple of hundred volts of domestic electricity supply. It's like an episode of The Crystal Maze. Except if we get it wrong, we won't just be locked in a room of cut-price theatrical props, but lightly flambéed in a carbon coffin. At one point, we are hemmed in by not one, but two felled trees, one in front and one recently keeled over behind. In lieu of anything better to do, we sit eating biscuits and try to decide if we could tow a tree with a supercar, when a farmer approaches from across a field in a Hilux.

    "Well, now tharn," he says, looking at the McLaren with an appraising eye, "don't seemlikeyou'llbegoinoveruporaroundthattree, eh?" I stare at him blankly but with expectation, like a labrador that's just been shown a biscuit. "Notwiththatoneanyway, eh?" Still nothing from me. The farmer sighs, looks from me to the McLaren to the 70-foot-long tree across the road, branches splayed for 30 feet or more across the roadway, and sighs, "Love-ly Macalaren. It's just that I'm going to need... a bigger chainsaw" - these last words said with the kind of weary resignation that you get when you've turned up to a large-calibre gunfight waving a teaspoon.

    He returns with several chainsaws and a Kubota digger, and soon enough we're on our way, safe in the knowledge that at least one farmer has enough firewood for the next decade. Then it's past Schull, a trip across a causeway feathered by the froth of the Atlantic, Skibbereen and the N71 through Clonakilty. It was at this point we realised that in our determination to investigate what felt like every geographical oxbow of the Atlantic side, we were about to miss our ferry, so we edited a chunk of the very south of Ireland by heading up the M9 and picking up the Wicklow Mountains National Park as a final flourish. The Wicklow and Sally Gaps - poorly surfaced in places, glorious in others. The browns and greens of the moor, the road sweeping and cutting and endlessly interesting. We got joyfully muddled for a final time, lost for the joy of driving.

    And then, suddenly, it was over. We'd lapped Ireland, covered nearly 2,000 miles of back road and proved that nothing really comes close to a supercar on any kind of road. As long as it's the right kind of supercar, and the right kind of road. Inevitably, we were stopped by the Garda on the way into Dublin on the pretext that they'd "never seen a car like that before", and we were asked where we'd been. "On a Lap of Ireland," I said. "What? All of it, in this weather?" said the Garda, bemusedly. When I replied in the affirmative, he asked how it was.

    "One of the best trips I've ever made," I replied. And when I spoke the words, I realised just how true it was.

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