The thing about travelling, more precisely the thing about travelling if you are a confirmed carb junkie like little old me is that carbs can quickly begin to make up 80% of your diet, the remaining 20% obviously being chocolate. So in a bid to fight off scurvy I grab a deee lishus fruit smoothie at Dublin airport.

The 25 minute flight to Cork has only 3 passengers on it. I am at the back and I get a private security briefing from my very own personal flight attendant. I feel very safe and very well informed about life jackets.

The new airport at Cork is echoingly vast, built only two years ago it is all light wood and glass walls. Like every other airport.

In the baggage hall where I have no business to be, I linger and lust over the big suitcases, no doubt full of novelties such as "changes of clothing" and giant 250ml tubes of shower gel. Oh how the less thrifty live.

I am spied by the tourist information officer who offers to enlighten me on all things Corkside. I have a list of questions that I was planning to Google. I fire them at him one by one, and he, like a series winner on Mastermind answers without hesitation, flourishing maps and leaflets containing "further information" with the easy confidence of Roger Federer playing Andy Murray.

He must be the world's most knowledgeable tourist officer bar none, if I were his boss I would give him a pay rise. His boss is also ahead of the game too though 'cos Ireland is the only place I have come across who have tourist info at the airport. The others just have airport information.

When I say I am camping he looks genuinely worried,I think he has a mild case of "woman travelling alone" fever, I saw this in Dublin, it seems to make some men uncomfortable, you can see them fidgeting with their loincloth as they speak to you. He urges me with the bedside manner of a kindly doctor to stay in town at a budget hostel. It seems like very good advice. He asks what I thought of Dublin and says with a wink that of course Cork is the real capital of Ireland. I tell him about my "Guinness experience" and he says "my father would turn in his grave to see how they pour Guinness out there" - "there" being England.

So informed with bus numbers, routes and Cork butter museum location I head into town.

For me, a new town, means new uncharted bakeries to discover and my gluten savvy nose does not let me down. It is late lunchtime and I have brought my appetite with me from Dublin. "The natural food bakery" is the first place anyone should go in Cork. It is tiny and only has space for three people to perch, but the "don't spare the fillings" baps and cakes are sooo good. As I scoff, other customers come in and congratulate "James" on the birth of his daughter only weeks ago. She weighed a pretty doughy 10lbs 9oz which is not as heavy as his son who apparently weighed a whopping 12 lbs. My unwitting gasp of admiration and empathy draws me into the conversation as if I were a regular. I have a laugh with a wiley old lady next to me about the trouble she is having folding up her brolly, the rather handsome young man she is having coffee with tells me how to get to the art gallery and I decide I rather like Cork, within five minutes I feel like I have lived here all my life. I munch a wedge of yummy garlic and cheese bap followed by a generous slab of "bob" cake, named after Bob Dylan, as Orlaith the baker, who created it is a fan, so James tells me. The shops bakery is out at Blackrock and is open on Sundays. If you are ever in Cork, bring me back a piece of Bob.

Cork is great, the weather is rubbish.

The centre straddles two strands of a river and there are pretty bridges connecting the shopping island to the steeply rising other side of town.

I head for a camping shop and procure myself a little purple flysheeted lovely. I have become quite a connoisseur of the two man tent market and I can talk ripstop nylon and hydrostatic head as well as any old grizzly Bear Grylls.

The town is a shopper's dream, ergo mine, and I rue my pitiful luggage allowance. In a futile bid to curb my compulsion to purchase and to get out of the ceaseless pouring rain I find another camping shop and get seduced by a range of "self-inflating mattresses." A whole 3.5 cm thick of cushiony comfort,no huffing or puffing required. There are many, many occassions on which I am a great fan of huffing and puffing, but alone in a one girl tent is not one of them The self-inflater is made down the road from Cork and comes with a lifetime guarantee. I draw a beard on it and hug it tightly.

I ask a couple of people "can you tell me which is the stop for the bus to Blarney" and feel like I am giving some sort of ridiculous wartime password but no-one laughs, or hands me a cyanide pill with a stoical "good luck old chap". When the bus arrives I ask for the stop at the campsite and everyone on the bus has a fifteen minute discussion about which stop this would be. I am being urged by three different people including an old Irishman that I think may be mad drunk or both, to get off at different stops. I am saved by the woman in the seat behind me who hisses, "you want station road." She ignores the helpful madman and whispers directions to me. I assume it is best not to directly contradict the advice of the madman before the pub has opened and he has had time for a calming ten pints or so of the "black stuff".

I follow Marie's directions, she was born in Cork and works on the local paper. When I tell her that I am from Dorchester she says "oh I am a big Thomas Hardye fan" I give her my address and tell her to visit if she can. She seems neither drunk nor mad. Then I get off the bus in Blarney.

I walk for miles along a country lane and note that Southern Ireland is indeed very green, hoping there is a campsite somewhere along it, there certainly isn't anything else, except blackberry bushes. I wonder how long I could survive on blackberries if I am stranded and just as I am coming to the conclusion ... "not very long" a signpost for "Blarney pitch and putt and caravan park" tells me I have arrived.