Love is anything but plane sailing

LOVE was definitely in the air when a group of daters, including Spanish Point’s Aisling Walsh, set a new Guinness World record for the world’s highest-ever speed date last week.
The dates took place at 35,000 feet as the group from across Ireland and Europe jetted off to the capital of romance, Venice.

While Aisling herself didn’t find romance in the skies, she told us that she loved the experience and has made some new friends after sharing the unusual experience.

“I didn’t find love but, to be honest, I only went for the craic,” she told us. The Guinness World Record was part of Expedia’s ‘Holidate’, an experiment designed to show a link between travel and love. The 60 daters took part in a series of different dates over 24 hours on their way to Venice.

The 30-year-old recalled, “My friend saw a competition advertised to take part in and she put me in for the first stage. Then I thought, ‘ah sure I may as well go for it’ so I filled out the questionaire they sent out, answering questions about what I was like and why I wanted to go on the trip. I just thought to myself, ‘it’s only a couple of days and it might be a bit of a laugh so why not’?”

The 60 male and female singletons, including six from Ireland, all came together in the UK for the first time before heading off on their record-breaking trip to Venice.

“We stayed in a hotel in Luton and we had three dates, they had us earmarked for three people and we had a 20-minute date with each of them. At the start I thought, ‘oh my God what are we going to talk about for 20 minutes’ but it was actually grand.

“Over the 24 hours we had two rounds of dates with the same people and for the first round we weren’t allowed talk about travel because apparantly travel is the most common topic of conversation on a first date,” explained the art student, who is currently living in Dublin.

The flight to Venice saw Aisling take part in 21 three-minute speed dates.

“All of the girls were sat down on their seats and the fellas moved onto each date every three minutes when the whistle blew,” she said.

However, despite the romantic Venetian setting, cupid didn’t strike Aisling. Not that she minds. 

“Even if you did find someone you fancied, most of the people there were from England, France or Germany and after a three-minute date I don’t think I’d be up for that. But it was really good craic, everybody was really sound and everyone was up for a laugh. It wasn’t really intense, nobody was really looking for relationships, I don’t think anyway,” she said.

“On the way home, the Irish ones were wondering if there was any romance. I think there were some numbers exchanged alright but I don’t know if it was romance or just friendship. There were a few groups who made friends and I’ll probably keep in touch with some of the people I met.”