Nice work if you can get it

Fancy a six-month holiday? Ultimate Job in Ireland judge ARMINTA WALLACEhelped choose the winners in Kinsale

FOR CENTURIES the Co Cork town of Kinsale has been the starting place for adventurous expeditions and tales of derring-do. Even now its maze of curving streets, meandering tidal inlets and plethora of hidden coves give the visitor the strong impression that a band of pirates might spring out from around the next corner.

If Kinsale is a fairy-tale setting, Ballinacurra House is its magic castle. Wrought-iron gates open to reveal an avenue lined with trees right out of Lord of the Ringscentral casting, their roots looming as high as the roof of your car. Most folks, however, don't even get this far. A winged Georgian gem that offers a winning combination of style, fun and a gloriously gentle young wolfhound named Oscar, Ballinacurra is what's known in the trade as an exclusive-use private estate – a country house that is hired out in its entirety for weddings, private parties and whatever you might be having yourself.

Last weekend it hosted the 20 young finalists in the Ultimate Job in Ireland competition. Just one pair of wannabe travellers would emerge from Ballinacurra with the coveted prize, a six-month stint of travel to the world’s most luxurious honeymoon destinations, complete with €20,000 salary. A heaven-sent opportunity? No doubt about it. But first the couples had to negotiate a hellish series of tests, traps and challenges.

Their first task found them racing through the streets of Kinsale in cocktail dress and trainers in a game of find-the-restaurant – not so easy in a town with more than 40 eateries, 28 pubs and a reputation as a gourmet haven. They were given clues relating to four upmarket restaurants, each of which was holding two tables. Four by two: it meant two couples would end up with vouchers for the chipper.

It sounds like the kind of gratuitously cruel stunt beloved of reality TV, but the point was to test their ability to stay calm under pressure, their ability to think on their feet and, once the puddings were demolished and the dishes cleared away, their ability to write a restaurant review, which had to be uploaded to the Ultimate Job in Ireland website in a matter of hours.

It also helped them orient themselves for their main challenge of the weekend: to shoot (and edit) a three-minute video promoting Kinsale as a wedding destination, plus another video to encourage applicants to enter next year’s competition. In between they were expected to blog regularly, appear dressed to the nines at all hours and generally keep their heads about them in a timetable that appeared to have been written in the shifting sands of Kinsale Harbour.

Each couple also had to undergo a gruelling hour-long interview with the competition judges. I know it was gruelling, because I was one of those wielding a gruel. My role was to represent The Irish Times– in short, to make sure the winning couple would be able to carry out the part of their prize that involves writing a monthly article for this supplement during their travels.

For my three fellow judges, the three women who came up with this extraordinarily ambitious idea in the first place – wedding planner Rosemarie Meleady, travel agent Zara Stassin of Zara’s Planet, and PR guru Jillian Godsil of Practice PR, collectively known as Runaway Bride & Groom – the weekend turned a six-month dream marketing campaign project into intense, edgy and occasionally emotional reality.

“When we set up the project to begin with, we envisaged the winners writing about the various destinations, with maybe a bit of blogging and social media,” says Meleady. “Even in our wildest moments we never dreamed we’d get a response like this.” After it appeared online in February the competition went global, with 15,000 couples applying to enter, from China to Macedonia, Australia, the US and South Africa as well as Ireland. From these 1,500 were selected; then, with the help of an online vote, it was narrowed down to 50. By the time the final 10 were chosen, it really was a case of game on.

As they assembled at Ballinacurra House on Friday afternoon for a champagne reception it became clear that the finalists were no pushy PR clones but a smart, varied and likeable bunch. Tim Oliphant had been on Gladiators– and had the muscles to prove it. Dee Morrissey was a fashion editor and model, and looked every inch of it. Fast-talking Matt Chapman had done stand-up in Chicago as well as the voiceover for a character in the video game Mortal Kombat. Surfer dude Allan Mulrooney, shoulder-length blond hair and chiselled good looks notwithstanding, turned out to be a geography teacher from Sligo who has set up a charity in Indonesia. He and his psychologist partner, Niamh O'Connor, were childhood sweethearts.

For each of the couples a win would be a life-changing experience. But what was in it for Kinsale? Why would the town’s hotels and restaurants provide free food and a harbour cruise and huge levels of goodwill and hospitality? Why would Des and Lisa McGahan of Ballinacurra House open their exquisite Georgian doors and jaw-dropping collection of Chinese art (which is enough to make even a confirmed singleton seriously consider getting married again, just to have an excuse to hire out the house) to this weekend of media mayhem?

The answer has to be: because Kinsale Chamber of Tourism is quick to spot a good news story and a clever marketing opportunity rolled into one. The couples spent the weekend checking out the chic centrality of the Blue Haven Hotel, the romantic views of the harbour from the Sovereign honeymoon suite at the Trident Hotel, the spectacular light-filled glass confection that is the Carlton Hotel perched above Oysterhaven Bay.

They came, they saw, they wrote restaurant reviews. They also made their three-minute videos of Kinsale, many of them to professional standards, which are currently zooming around the world of cyberspace and social media. Vast numbers of people have been following the Ultimate Job finalists online – and may well follow them to Kinsale, and not just for weddings and honeymoons, either.

The good news for Irish readers, of course, is that we can do the same with consummate ease. You can drive to Kinsale from Dublin in less than three hours these days. Once you get there, though, it’s like another Ireland – the old-fashioned kind where people are chatty and helpful (thanks for the loan of the jacket, Stuart from the wine bar), but also incorporating the new Ireland where you can get good coffee and great retail therapy and do everything from canoeing through bird-spotting to walking at one of our best-kept tourist secrets, Charles Fort.

By Sunday afternoon it was time to choose the winners. Frankly, we became fond of them all. It was dismaying, to say the least, to have to choose just one couple. But in the end we judges were unanimous in our choice of the UK-Australian duo Mark and Denise Duffield-Thomas. Creative, clued in, courteous and, dammit, just really nice, they now get to embark on an adventure out of Kinsale. Within a fortnight they’ll be travelling to Zanzibar, Mauritius and Kenya. Stay tuned for further news in the pages of Go.

• Check Mark and Denise's progress, or wish them well, at runawaybrideandgroom.com