If you’re considering a road trip holiday in some far-flung destination this summer, it would be prudent to make sure you know how much you’re going to be shelling out for your hire car. Varying vastly from country to country, the cost of your car might well either make or break your holiday budget.

Back in September last year, the Telegraph featured an article covering both the cheapest and most expensive countries for car hire (based on airport prices), centred around a survey by a well-known travel price comparison website.
If you’re considering a trip across the water to sunny Ireland, then you’ll be surprised to learn that you’ll pick up the cheapest hire car of all 131 locations featured in the survey – a bit of a change from their notoriously expensive €6 pints of the black stuff and high cost of living. Ireland’s a beautiful (and rather convenient) place to motor around on a 10-day jaunt, so this revelation comes as a very nice surprise indeed.

Start in Dublin, obviously – stay for a night, take in the sights (the Guinness brewery being top of the bucket list), the atmosphere and the accent, relaxing before you embark on your road trip. Make your way down through Wexford to Cork city, Killarney, Blarney, and up to the ring of Kerry, on to Galway, and then, if you have time, up to the North. If you’re a road-tripping novice, Ireland’s a great little country in which to try out your first, and you’re sure to be met with warm welcomes by some very interesting characters.
The next most inexpensive country to rent a car, says the Telegraph, is Spain. A much larger country this time, you could fly into Barcelona and, again, take in the sights of the city for a night or two, moving on down to Montserrat and then over to the Pyrenees. And that’s just a tiny portion of what Spain has to offer – it’s huge, and there’s a vast variety of various landscapes and urban areas to take in, so it’s best to do your research.