I’m currently addicted to Race Around the World and I bet it’s for the same reason as millions of other viewers. Yes, it showcases countries, so far, Japan and South Korea in the new series, beautifully. Am I moved by the moments of kindness and cooperation that transcend language and culture? Also yes. But I am 100% tuning in for the explosive travel drama. Absolutely.

I confess that when mother and daughter team Eugenie and Isabel mentioned that their relationship could be "turbulent" or when Viv explained that her third husband, Stephen, is an "acquired taste" with a bit of a face on her, I leaned in a little more and grabbed the metaphorical popcorn.

For all of the show's brilliant cinematography and John Hannah’s dulcet Lanarkshire narration (read me a bedtime story anytime, John…), I, and I suspect many others, relish witnessing the high highs and gutter level lows that occur when people who are unused to travelling together are forced to make it work on the road with not much money and no smartphone.

I have long been a proponent that travelling with your partner is the greatest litmus test of your relationship. Indeed, a 2019 survey of 2000 couples revealed one in four of them took a "make or break holiday" in their first three months or sooner.

Travelling has the potential to bring out the best and the worst in a person. Spending 24 hours together in unfamiliar circumstances, sharing new experiences can be glorious but it is just as often frustrating, uncomfortable - illuminating in the least flattering ways. At some point, most travel involves challenges and problem-solving. One of the greatest is asking yourself "do I want to travel through life with the person in socks and sandals sniffing a mini-Danish at the breakfast buffet?"

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My husband Peter and I had our own make or break holiday early in our relationship, travelling on a coach that smelled of onions and extra-strength lager to Lake Bled in Slovenia. Initially, we had a blast, trying to crash a wedding reception, complete with a polka band, then gambling in a tiny basement casino where they proffered free trays of cling film-wrapped bananas at Blackjack tables before drinking shots of juniper brandy and swimming across the freezing lake in the shadow of Bled Castle while a storm tore down. So far so good, let’s tie the knot already! But, on our last morning our travel differences emerged.

As summer approaches, Instagram and TikTok are full of reels decrying the "Travel Princess" in a relationship. That one person who just ambles alongside their "planner" partner who frantically stays on top of the details for flights, hotel, baggage allowance and who will have a veritable digital Rolodex of places to go and things to try once you get there. My husband? 100% a Travel Princess; pass him his tiara and velvet neck cushion - he’s just happy to be there. And that was always fine by me since organising a holiday is, for me, as exciting as the holiday itself.

Which is why it was deeply shocking to me when, on the last day at our Eco Camping in Lake Bled, I discovered he actually wasn’t so easy-going. At breakfast, like the over-planner I am, II raced through my cured meats: "If we finish in five minutes we still have time to rent a rowing boat and get to the castle before our bus! Peter? Are you listening? We’ve got to hurry." My laid-back boyfriend of a few months looked me directly in the eyes and took the slowest sip of coffee ever known to man. So slow I am sure entire worlds formed in the moment between the cup leaving the saucer and the liquid reaching his lips. The message was silent but strong: "I do not rush my morning coffee. Ever."

Of course, we argued and though we did get into our boat, I did the rowing, we made it only halfway to the castle, the atmosphere felt as chilly as the water. It was the day I learned that he would always go with the flow but only if he got an unhurried Americano first. And that perhaps I could do with easing off on the control-freak pedal (when I say learned, I mean I knew; I obviously didn’t stop). We’ve now travelled to countless countries with and without a kid in relatively good humour and I still maintain that if you really want to pressure - or joy - test your relationship you go on holiday.

This is still true, maybe more so, in later years. While we’re not quite an old married couple, when I recently told him "I could sit in a room with you talking crap forever" he replied, quick as a shot: "Well, that's marriage." So, when we recently got a night to ourselves at a hotel, our first in three and a half years, I wondered if we'd be able to recapture the joy of "just the two of us". Or, whether, as we’d seen with other couples, we would end up staring in silence at the menu, as though it might provide some conversation and chemistry as well as crab cakes. Happily, we were just like daft young lovebirds again, careening through East London eating and drinking copiously and engaging in a frankly embarrassing amount of PDA on the back seats of buses.

Some say that there's only room for one travel princess and one travel-planning geek in a relationship and until our baby came along and I got chronically ill I agreed. But when Peter had to step up I discovered that he was a more extensive and infinitely more intense planner than me. Now, we have Google Maps with multiple pins for everything from Arepa restaurants to soft play centres, there are multi-page budgeting spreadsheets and shared documents alight with primary colour coding as though designed by the Bauhaus.

Slowly, over the years it seems I finally relinquished my obsessive travel planning while Peter has abdicated his role as travel princess. Both our trips and relationships are better for it. Turns out, like everything else, learning to compromise, meeting in the middle of our extremes, was always the best destination to move towards.