Taking on the Wild Atlantic Way in a Kia Picanto

When I found a packet of French Fancies in the Co-op reduced to 57p on account of their rapidly approaching best-before date, I had a good feeling about this trip.

As well I might have. Spoiler alert: Ireland is my new favourite driving destination. How have I not driven these roads before? There's all the talk of Scotland's North Coast 500, of which I've driven and ridden large parts, batting off midges and taking in sensational views. But this, part of Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way, tops it.

I think this tops all other long drives I've had too. I've driven a Land Rover Defender to Portugal; taken a Honda NSX across Route 66; ridden a motorbike to Berlin in a day; driven the Pacific Coast Highway, the national parks of Victoria, Australia, France's most noted Cols, the best bits of Spain and Portugal, some unrestricted and closed roads on the Isle of Man... and yet one evening, for a solid, unstinting, unrelenting hour and a half, close to my doorstep, comes easily one of the best drives I've ever had. In a Kia Picanto.

We like the Picanto a lot here at Autocar. And me more than most of my colleagues. The Picanto and the Dacia Sandero occasionally vie for the title of the cheapest car on sale - not quite as aggressively as two nearby supermarkets undercutting each other on unleaded prices, but there's some to and fro and resulting pride.

At the moment, it's advantage Picanto, at £13,665 versus £13,795 for the Sandero, doubtless to the annoyance of the good people that the to its spaciousness because ising in harm; part a city car - my preference, to drive, is the Kia.

That's not to denigrate the Sandero, you understand. I recently drove one around the world. See how I achieved this without ever leaving the UK in the 6 April 2022 issue.) But the Kia is, to my mind, more fun. More precise, more agile, more together, and yet still easily refined enough for a long journey.

This is how I come to find myself at Holyhead, Anglesey, on a sunny afternoon, waiting for the three-and-a-half-ish-hour ferry journey to Dublin. I've already spent four hours and 240 miles at the wheel of the Picanto with no complaints.

It's not the cheapest Picanto variant. Instead, it's the range-topping GT-Line S, at £18,295 including its metallic paint, which brings with it a 1.0-litre three-cylinder turbo engine driving through a five-speed manual gearbox, more on which later.

It makes 99bhp and 127lb ft and the car weighs only 1030kg, so it can do 0-62mph in 9.9sec and tops out at 112mph. Neither of those performance numbers is a shabby figure, and nor is the 53.3mpg it returns on the combined drive cycle - and which you can have in the real world without effort.

But, moreover, the seats are comfortable, you can set and forget the climate control, the infotainment, mirrors, my phone - and there's straightforward cruise control.

Bigger cars would have less road and wind noise, a more ass-kicky stereo and more in-gear motorway oomph, certainly, but I'm as happy in a Picanto as I would be in most cars, with the exception - common to most small cars - that the mean kids in Audis don't respect city cars on motorways.

Maybe the angrier-looking Picanto facelift (with a 1.2 rather than a 1.0 turbo) will help. Holyhead to Dublin is one of a few ferry routes into Ireland.

Some mates tell me that Northern Ireland has great roads too, but the Republic of Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way - or part of it, given time restraints - is my interest for the next couple of days.

The Wild Atlantic Way is one of the world's longest defined coastal routes, running a full 1553 miles (so I won't have time for it all), from the Inishowen peninsula in the north, down the entire west coast and then east along the south coast as far as Kinsale, County Cork.

More Irish friends - we often end up in the same place as Irish motoring hacks - have told me that if one keeps going from there, Wexford, in the south-east, has more great roads again, so perhaps a circumnavigation of the whole island, starting and finishing in Dublin or Belfast, both terrific cities, is the dream driving trip.

But today I land in Dublin and head pretty much west, then down a bit, to Shannon, crossing the country in under three hours, from where some of the best roads - and, crucially for photographer Jack Harrison's camera, views - are within easy reach.