Ireland is a magical place. Just to the left of Wales and England and nicely buffeted by strong winds. It's famous for many things - like Kerrygold Butter and Charlie Haughey - but also has beautiful scenery and alcohol. You can dance at a ceilidh or just chill out in your B&B listening to a tape of Dana or U2. Ireland has so much to offer. If sport is your thing then there's hurling, a tough game at which the Irish excel (they're currently World champs!) and Gaelic Football (also World champs).

So do yourself a favor and go to Ireland.

Apart from warfare and group dating, hurling must be the oldest team sport in the world. It's there in the Celtic myths* - it's what the legendary warriors did in their spare time between stealing bulls and each other's wives. Setanta, on his way to meet his father and the fated meeting with Cullen's hounds, wiled away the journey over mountains by hitting a sliotar around with a hurley. You can see elements of the game in more modern concoctions such as football and rugby (as well as the slightly more effete pastimes of hockey and lacrosse**).

* Legend has it that the first hurling match took place in 1272 BC when the Fir Bolgs defeated the Tuatha Dé Dannan in a twenty-seven-aside game.

** Please don't write in if you're a lacrosse or hockey player and think you're hard. It's merely a comment about the presentation and culture of the game rather than a dismissal of the individual players' physical prowess (though I bet you're all a load of public school jessies).

The Roads

Drivers in Ireland can be divided into four different categories: local drivers, old ladies, English tourists and farmers. Farmers on tractors are like pheasants. They'll wait and wait for a car - sometimes as much as three or four days.Then when a car comes they will shoot out and hog the centre of the road. Diagram: If the farmer was just going back to his farm from a field but has been made to wait a long time because no car was there for him to annoy, he will become agitated. When a car does eventually come he will deliberately drive on to the next major town or tourist destination, calculating that this is where the car will be heading. This won't bother the local driver unduly. He'll simply overtake at 100mph when he gets to the next dangerous bit of road. He'll do this, moreover, while reading the sports page of the Irish Independent and swigging from a can of harp.

Food

Most Irish pubs worth their salt and vinegar will serve Tayto, the regular Irish potato crisps. To the untrained palate they taste exactly the same as any other kind of crisp. But to the typically rootless Irish person drifting round the world dreaming of home they are a beautiful and rare foodstuff which transports the eater on a mystical journey back to Erin's wild shores. People buy box loads of the stuff saying they were addicted to them. They're dry, slightly greasy and very salty. But you don't understand says the fat person stuffing their face with crisps. Lots of Irish food is special like that, particularly if it's hard to come by.

The Celts

The Celts are back. No longer content to be the put upon people of Europe, they have started to push back into their traditional habitats of mainland Britain and the Continent, brandishing their diddly i music and their Gaia Appreciation workshops.

What is it about the Celts that is so attractive? Why are we all so fascinated with this bunch of brawlers and pissheads? More than any of the ancient peoples the Celts have undergone a massive rennaissance in recent years. Perhaps it is to do with the fact that, unlike the Romans, Greeks or Egyptians, they have rather cleverly left no written record of their existence. What we do know is that they liked pretty swirly patterns, had long hair, made beautiful jewellery, were good at fighting each other but crap at fighting Romans and liked a drink and a sing-song. They left behind weapons, pots, countless forts and burial mounds and, of course, enough jewellery to stock every stall in Camden lock market for the next twenty years.