It's 8am on a blessedly hot morning and adventure tour company Vagabond's converted four-wheel-drive Land Rover, which is parked opposite the Tourist Office on Suffolk Street in Dublin, is attracting a lot of attention. It's a big solid yoke, that can seat 12, with a sturdy baggage trailer attached, writes Rosita Boland

Before

The five people leaving Dublin today with driver and guide Dave O'Connor will be spending a week seeing some of the lesser-visited parts of Ireland: the Beara peninsula, Gougane Barra, Bere Island, and side roads up west to Mayo. There's a trip to the Skelligs if weather permits and a climb up Croagh Patrick if legs permit. The tour also ticks must-do boxes such as Blarney Castle, the Cliffs of Moher and the Iveragh peninsula.

It's a terrific and imaginative itinerary with flexibility for individual requests: you can go kayaking, walking, swimming or horse-riding, all of which are possible to arrange due to the small number on each tour. Other people will be joining the Land Rover on the way, but the five who are leaving out of Dublin will be on board for the full week. They are: husband and wife Bob and Sue McLaughlin from Syracuse in New York, and Pam Conruy from San Diego with her sons Kyle (nine) and Jarred (seven).

The Land Rover navigates Dublin traffic and heads south-west for our first stop: Dunamase Castle in Co Laois. It's the first time in Ireland for all of them.

For Bob, this is the first holiday longer than a week that he has taken in 27 years of full-time employment: they will be away a fortnight. There must be a lot of expectations on the trip as a result, and strong reasons for choosing Ireland as a destination.

"Since I've been 16, I've been thinking of coming to Ireland," Bob explains. "My people came to America during the potato Famine. The people who left Ireland always missed it and I wanted to see for myself the place they had left."

The McLaughlins want to see the scenery, and they wanted a personal-style of tour of Ireland. "I didn't want to be stuck on a big tour bus with loads of people, and there was no way we wanted to drive ourselves," Sue says. "To me, Ireland is a sort of mythical place."

The McLaughlins have already spent a couple of days in Dublin, arriving in from London. Sue is amazed that although Dublin is so much smaller than London, it is "far more congested than London. It's so noisy, and there are so many cars".

"I chose Ireland because I'm travelling with two kids and I wanted a family-friendly country to visit. And a safe country," Pam Conruy says.

She wants to see castles. The boys want to hunt for leprechauns. And gold. "It's very real to them," Pam assures me. Sure enough, when we get off the bus at Dunamase castle - which gobsmacks the children - Kyle and Jarred arm themselves with sticks and start bashing the undergrowth.

"We're looking for treasure!" they tell Dave. Jarred finds a piece of metal and puts it in his pocket, fully convinced it is precious and very old. Pam just grins.

After

It's a week later, and the people climbing out of the Land Rover in Dublin are sunburnt. In a nearby bar, they give their feedback on the week. It's clear that Dave was a huge hit as a driver/guide. In fact, for Sue, along with the Skelligs, his commentary on historical and contemporary Ireland along the way was the highlight of the whole trip.

"I learned so much about Ireland," she says. "And it was always interesting."

"I actually got more from the week than I was expecting, and I was expecting a lot," Pam says. "And people stopped and talked to the kids all the time," she adds. "And when they didn't have kids' menus, they just halved portions."

"But I had a hard time eating all my potatoes!" Jarred interjects.

So what was a lowlight? They all look at each other. They're trying very hard to be polite, but Bob just can't hold it in any longer. He sighs deeply. "The amount of litter," he says frankly. "I was surprised. No, I was amazed. It was everywhere. About the only place we didn't see lots of litter was when we climbed Croagh Patrick, and I guess because it's a bit harder to get up it, there was less litter there."

"Why don't people clean up after themselves?" Sue asks rhetorically. "And we found cigarette butts everywhere, all over the pavements. Is that because you can't smoke inside now? We had dinner one night sitting out at a patio and while the table had been cleaned, nobody had thought to sweep the ground. It was covered with butts. Why would we want to eat sitting over all that dirt and smell? It didn't look like clearing up was part of the consciousness here."

Another thing that struck them all was what they considered the high admission price to castles and heritage centres.

"Blarney was expensive. So was Srokestown House. So was Dunguaire - €4.50 just to look at a couple of rooms, no guide or anything," Sue says.

They did not like Blarney. "Too touristy," Bob says firmly. "Too many tour buses. You can't appreciate a place when it is so crowded. The Cliffs of Moher were crowded too, but there was more room to move around there, so you didn't notice quite as much."

"Croagh Patrick was touristy too," Sue says. "All those people renting you walking sticks to use to get to the top. It was very commercial, I thought."

"A lot of people in Ireland say 'no worries'," Pam marvels. "I've noticed that. But isn't that something Australians say?"

Pam is right: I hadn't noticed how prevalent those two words are these days. All those holidays and working-visa trips to Australia from Ireland have clearly resulted in our language receiving a few linguistic souvenirs.

While they have high praise for most of their accommodation, they were bewildered by the plumbing in the self-catering apartments they stayed in the previous night in Co Mayo.

"Well, the towel rail fell off the rail before we even put a towel on it," Sue says. "But what was really odd was, that to get the shower to run, you had to first turn the taps on at the washbasin."

How did they find out this water-flow arrangement?

"We had to ask the owner. He didn't seem to think there was anything strange about it. I don't know why he hadn't fixed it. Plumbers must be few and far between in Co Mayo!"

On a night out in a pub when they were hoping for Irish traditional music, they got all excited when they saw people with instruments. "But they sang country and western music!" Bob says. "With a brogue! I can tell you, I was not expecting that in an Irish pub."

For all of them, the highlight was the trip out to the Skelligs, especially as they were told it is so often inaccessible.

"What a place!" Bob whistles.

The boys, tired after the long journey back from the west that day, have been squabbling and flicking water at each other since we sat down. But when they hear the word "Skelligs" they both look up with huge grins on their faces.

"Puffins!" Jarred shouts. "Puffins!" Kyle shouts. "We loved the puffins!"

So, while the boys didn't find leprechauns, the puffins seem to have been an acceptable substitute.

Tourists' verdicts, next Tuesday: Ireland by bus