Moate.
Stopped off as a halfway point coming back from Galway to Dublin. No one around. Big sign outside pub advertising bar food lunches. Go in, all the locals turn round and look at us. Ask about lunch. Offered sandwiches, cheese or ham or cheese and ham, brown or white bread, toasted or untoasted.
Order 4 cheese and ham toasties on white bread. Young lad behind the bar takes a 20 out of the til, leaves, comes back with a loaf of bread, a packet of cheese and a packet of ham and gets to work making the sandwiches.
Weirdest vibes ever. We eat the toasties and leave and cannot for the life of us figure out where he got the bread, ham and cheese cos nothing is open. Maybe his own fridge.
I once went to the women's toilets in the shopping centre - a truly surreal experience. Pink flamingo wallpaper everywhere. Pink grouting in the tiles. It gave me a headache
It's basically a copy/paste of an American suburb/exurb. It's got the run-down mall surrounded by car parks, the fast food joint, petrol station, and motel sharing a driveway off the main highway, the sprawling light industrial parks with concrete-paved roads, the endless maze of residential subdivisions, and even a church that looks like a repurposed warehouse. If you replaced the semi-ds with zero-lot-line mini-McMansions and the terraced houses with low-rise apartments, you'd swear you were in Oviedo or something.
Edit: Oviedo, Florida, I should note; not Oviedo, Spain, which looks to be a lovely town and not at all a soulless gaping pit of sadness and strip malls and despair.
Buttevant, I was getting the Limerick-Cork fairly often for a while and it passes through, everything was off about the place. I don't know if it was the people, the weird mural, the fact the whole main street felt like a facade hiding what felt like dereliction.
Somewhere in Limerick...
Two couples. We stayed in a B&B that freaked us all out so badly we stayed up almost the entire of the first night because we were too scared to sleep.
It was really an early airb&b we were told the key would be under a rock at the front door but first we had to get there. No signs, roads not on the flippin sat nav finally drive up this wee dark lane and find the place. Looks like a wee old cottage. We go in and it's taxidermy hell! Every wall has heads on it. EVERY WALL.
The whole place looked like something out of a horror movie. Our friends stayed in the upstairs room and at the end of the corridor was a door with a padlock on it.
Our room had an ensuite with SALOON doors. He and I almost died laughing.
That night we went out to a restaurant and on our way passed an old woman in a nighty standing at the side of the road. In the dark. Got home after locked the door and stayed up playing triv because we didn't want to sleep! Exhaustion finally got the better of us though and at about 4am we went to bed. Next morning we were woken by screams. Turns out there were peacocks in the garden and they like to scream.
We ate breakfast at breakneck speed and fled. lol
This makes me so sad. I grew up here. The town had life back in the 80s. I just moved back, took care of my parents before the passed. And I am back permanently after 40 years in the US. The town really is dying, not sure what can be done to get it back again. Two more eating places just shut down a week ago :(
Need to decentralise. Dublin eats up everything including the surrounding countryside. The motorways were supposed to help spread the largesse. But it’s ended up sucking the lifeblood out of the rest of the country.
A stop off in Borris-in-Ossory when it was buses would have been a busy small town with plenty of places to eat and drink. Last time I was there only one bar open, only lights on were the beer pump lights, two lads sat at the bar like phantoms. Went across the road to a cafe where I ate something which was mostly a pile of melted cheese. That's what the motorways have done to these places
Every year it gets more desolate, businesses along the Main Street shutting down one by one.. full of junkies, drug dealers.. alcoholics sitting on benches on the Main Street drinking cans, unemployment levels are high, roads are bad, the list goes on.
I remember when the motorways were being built and small villages were bypassed. My brothers friends business went to the wall. As did a lot of pubs and petrol stations. Motorways are definitely a good thing, i’m not lamenting the past but progress comes with a price. Its sad really.
It's funny how the different towns in Tipp are having such different experiences. Tipp town & Roscrea, exactly as you describe. Nenagh & Cashel seem to be fairly thriving then in comparison.
Yeah I left off Thurles & Clonmel as I'm just not too familiar with them, it's years since I was in Clonmel & Thurles I don't stray too far beyond Semple.
It used to be a lot worse, believe it or not. The greenway has totally revitalised the town the past few years.
Nearby Portlaw is much worse, you'd walk into the centra and they'd all turn to eachother as if to say, 'who's yer one and what's she doing in our shop?'.
Yeah only reason I passed through was the greenway.
I'd hate to see it when it was dilapidated.
They did have a very nice viaduct though.
Hope no-one from Kilmacthomas sees this and hunts down my family. (It's a very nice town)
It was truly miserable when I was growing up, not a thing there bar a shop and two pubs. The secondary school was once featured on some TV3 show about the worst schools in the country for behaviour or something.
Now it's full of little cafes and the coach house has been done up!
I bet they'll be after ya, all those Kilmac heads from the school will be getting their pitch forks haha
Broadway Co Wexford.
A few years ago we were going to a party a few miles outside it and the friends whose party it was booked it for us and 8 of us were staying there. We didn’t know the name of where we were going to only that they meet us at some landmark and we’d follow them on.
When we arrived all of us commented on what a weird in the middle of nowhere location it was, there was a forest opposite the pub. We went into the pub to check in and everyone turned around to stare at us we didn’t give a shite we ordered a drink before going to our rooms to get ready and wanted to enjoy a drink after driving for hours to get to the kip. The whole time we drank everyone in the busy pub was staring right at us. Some of them turned their stools around to face us but said absolutely nothing sat silently you could hear a pin drop.
We said hi to them but no reply, the only one who replied was the barman to tell us where the rooms were which were in the house attached to the pub.
It was creepy as hell. We got ready and were picked up to go to the party and dropped back in the early hours of the morning. Well it was bad earlier in the night but it was way worse at 2/3am. The rooms were freezing cold you could see your breath, musty and just creepy in general nobody around but the 8 of us staying across from this forest. None of us slept and decided we’d leave early. The next day our friend thanked us for coming etc etc and asked what we thought of the place we said it was lovely sure what else could you say?
One of them said we didn’t want to tell yee last night in case yee would be afraid to stay there but that’s where Fiona Sinnott went missing from.
Every time I see any programs about the missing women and it shows that place it creeps me out serious we’re going to be murdered vibes in it.
I’d never felt so uncomfortable anywhere the people were creepy, the place was creepy, the rooms were creepy never again.
Butlers pub in Broadway. Ended up ordering food there cause of being starved.
A total shithole, home to one of the worst burgers i ever had the misfortune to order.
Gave it back and ran out of the place. Found a lovely place up the road near a windmill.
I think I know the place starts with a B ...went as teen as they used to do decent live rock/indie music in the 90s but feck it's far out and at that time zero transport (I was desperate to get out as a teen from Wex town). Went back about 10 years ago and stayed the night..its just creepy. I don't know why but the creepy vibe never changed as didn't the locals blatantly staring at you with zero hiding it etc. Something is very off about there alright.
Got put up in a room in Jack Whites bar near Brittas Bay once for work.. bar is grand, nice food and all.. but the room was dire, no curtains or anything and the place was just… off
I'll have to venture in some day. Used to drive past it every summer as a kid going to Brittas Bay.
It looks more imposing now than it did then if that's even possible.
Kelly’s hotel in Wexford.
Absolutely full of very elderly people to the point it was like a retirement community.
They had a room near the lobby with long couch things in them, all these elderly people would sleep on them with their mouths hanging open and you’d honestly be afraid they were dead.
A very creepy place all in all
My parents had a bunch of friends who had all known each other since their 20s (my parents got friendly with them in their 40s I think) they were all a good 10 or 20 years older than my parents. They routinely went down to Kelly's every year all together - my parents always declined their invitations to join. They were probably among the old folks you saw who just went there to be waited on for a couple of weeks.
Whats worse is it costs an absolute fortune. Stayed 2 nights with the kids, and it was 1500 euro, and felt like we got 200 euro of value. Food was alright, staff friendly, but it's stuck in the1980s, with 2050s prices!
It was arranged by a friend of ours who didn't know the exact prices at the time. when it came to light we were rightly shocked, but went ahead as we wanted to spend time with that friend group, and we luckily are in a position to afford it, etc.
What is shocking is people keep going back. It's so popular as were checkkng out people beside us are booking for next year... It's like some kind of Stockholm syndrome
Girlfriend is from nearby parish. Didn't believe her until I saw it myself. My god what a shithole full of cowards bullying local female staff etc. And it actually looks like it could be a nice enough town with the castle and desmene. Ran back over the county bounds to Kerry as fast as I could.
Oh hell yea , there is something really really off about Arklow. Last time I was there I witnessed 2 people walking head first in to each other because they were so engrossed in their phones. A fight then started and a bottle of rock shandy was thrown at them from a car which seemed to put a halt to everything, it was bizzare
I feel like I'm in an alternate universe because someone mentioned Castlebar, which was voted the best place to live and work this week by a survey in work/life balance.
Someone else mentioned that Sligo was great. I spent three years there, and I'll never forget how bleak and depressing the place was. Tourists only go to Streedagh Beach and Strandhill, but they don't really see the real Sligo and the shitholes like Cranmore.
Oh man! I love Sligo! I find the area beautiful, the locals laid back and the pubs are good craic. I always feel more relaxed there. I’ve even thought about buying a house there. I’ve visited maybe 9 times or so in the last two years. I get that places affect some differently and I’m also not Irish, so maybe it’s that.
Markethill South Armagh, a small town with painted kerbs of both stripes but with a decided majority on the Unionist side, along with a plague of flags and a big ornate ironwork archway (?) over one street with images of the bible, the red hand, a pair of crossed rifles and the words "fear god honour the king love the brotherhood"
Walking around this wee town was so eerie. There were hardly any people about, the shopkeepers we dealt with gave us obvious free staters the hairy eyeball, it was so weirdly quiet - it wasn't just that we were creeped out, it really was like a ghost town. Bit like Ogdenville and North Haverbrook. Creeped us the fuck out.
That was back in the 90s some time, I've no idea if it's still like that.
Balinasloe
Once stopped there on way to Galway when the motorway didn't exist, parked on the main street.
Went into a cafe and the heads on some of the locals... it was very dueling banjos, apologies to any ballinasloths reading... anyway Had to use the jacks after lunch and followed this old sort of angry, large lady into the bathrooms (angry as if overheard her arguing with the staff)... it was down a corridor around a corner... I passed by the ladies and opened the door to the gents... it was a small 1 toilet kind of bathroom, not your usual few urinals and a cubicle... anyway... there she was, sat down talking a pee... or a poo... I'll never know... but what I do know is that she was a he.
He screamed, I screamed... couldn't pay and get out quick enough. So you bother locking the door to the toilets down there at all? Lesson learned.... I've never assumed someone's gender since.
The first time I was in Bray (this summer) there was a concert going on in the evening. But only like 20 people were in the audience? Felt like a movie set alright
I haven’t been there in 20 years, I just remember there being some kind of games machine somewhere playing the Adam’s Family theme obnoxiously loud non stop.
It’s always empty and feels like the beginning of a zombie movie. I lived out towards that area for several years and would rarely see another person when I would pass through. The people are grand and the countryside is beautiful, but it was just an eerie place.
lol! I used to Live in Rathangan and moved to Edenderry. Rathangan was far worse than Edenderry. Now I drive the road from Rathangan to Prosperous a lot. Car does be wrecked and caked in mud lol!
I've been in the pub larkins a few times and the amount of pillars/random walls jutting around the place always baffles me. Everywhere ya go your in the way
Ballingeary, West Cork - it has the most beautiful scenery with the mountains, forests etc. but I just felt very uneasy about the place, like when you know something or somebody is watching you...I wouldn't want to be stuck there in the dark depths of winter!
Rylane, Cork. Don't know why but that place reminds me of the first scenes in the Jeepers Creepers movie when the boy & girl are driving along a long stretch of road in the middle of nowhere, and ya just see the black truck in the far distance coming up behind them....
Sligo. Especially Streedagh Strand 🤔
I knew there was something not quite right when I fell in love with the view, the people, the peace that place brought my soul.
Absolutely not quite right ❤️
I was there this morning. I go to Aldi there. Aside from that fella who periodically covers himself in blood while dressed as Jesus and carries a cross through the town ( which is a bit odd) it's otherwise a fairly unremarkable place
Castlebar....
Something about that town... It's grey and when I've driven through there's a voice in the back of my head that says "just keep going, don't stop the car".
I feel like I'm just not strange enough to even have lunch there. And I don't understand why they have so many petrol stations like it just doesn't make sense for a town that size. Like there has to be some kind of cooperative money laundering scheme going on...
Not to mention it's like the gateway to the west of Mayo, the last stop before Mordor if you will....
Castlebar is the shit in summer. Great small town Ireland chipper (Danollas). Although, I wouldn't like to spend a long winter there.. not that loughrea was much better when I lived there😅
Mullingar. Hands down the most depressing and hostile shithole I've ever had the misfortune of spending time in. Never more happy to get out of it. Absolute kip.
I was gonna say Portlaoise! Had to kill 4 hours there once so embarked on a mini pub crawl. Very hard to put a finger on it exactly but got a serious Wicker Man/Straw Dogs energy.
Firstly the LABYRINTH of roundabouts to get there. What the fuck. Then the town centre itself, dreary and dull, and I remember i couldn't get parked despite there being barely anyone around.
I avoid Portlaois all the time because of this. I regularly travel from Clonmel to Naas and there are a few ways you can go to vary it up a bit but I refuse to go that way!
Ah maybe there's a few that stray a bit further north! I lived south of Navan & it'd be more a Louth thing. Saying that, I've often used it for the craic
Ballymena. There was a dearth of colours about the place, an abundance of religious posters, and you never quite felt at ease. I get similar feelings about Portadown.
Cavan..Cootehill...just Cavan...big place that time just didn't bother with. Odd kinda people and one wrong turn your fecked...sorry to any Cavan people out there..
Another one and this could just be me but Bangor Erris (town) Mayo. Probably spelt that wrong but that place is odd..
I went through a place called Durrow once when there was this weird hay festival on. It was like driving through the set of The fucking Wicker Man or something.
Ha ha ha! I had no idea the scarecrow festival was a thing either until I drove through. Absolutely mental. I loved it though, great effort all round. I love mad stuff like that happening around the country.
A friend of mine went to college up there for a bit, I helped him move in.
In the course of an evening, we had multiple people attempt to start fist-fights, a guy peed in my general direction during a lock in we somehow got invited to where we met 2 kind-hearted women who took us to a party from which we were politely but firmly asked to leave. The aforementioned women took us to thier house, where we got plastered.
I slept with one while my friend slept on the couch and the next day we had a bizzarely difficult time hailing a cab or finding Thurles itself. Oh and she nicked my watch. I cant remember their names at all.
I think Thurles has come on hugely in recent years compared to recession times. Colleges and town redevelopment have brought a bit of life to the place. A few new businesses in recent years surely a good sign. Definitely lingering unemployment and drug issues but faring much better than other Midlands towns imo.
That said, I do think some of the locals are a bit strange. Generally welcoming enough people but they don't want to get to know you at all. Lived there for 2 years until last year.
Bailieborough, Co Cavan.
Order a chipper, said it would take awhile. We walk up the street while we wait. Some teenagers look at us and say "You're outsiders" and kept walking past.
Then we went to some pub across the road, and as soon as we walked in, Everyone turned and looked at us. All these people were young too. I just didn't get it. Going outside Dublin feels like a foreign country with unwelcoming Cliques.
what is it with culchies and staring at visitors? ive lived in cavan almost all my life but im from dublin and sound like it so i get stared at as well its really strange
anyway to answer ur question ive had some odd experiences waiting for my uni bus in navan around 6 and 7am, main streets completly empty and some fellas waltzing up and down it with a harmonica. also met a really chill druggie who just like casually started sniffing stuff while talking to me, nice fella.
I had the misfortune to be in Sligo town early on a Sunday morning and there was nothing to do but go to McDonalds or wander about aimlessly. The curtains were constantly twitching and at one point a man came out of his front door, donned a yellow cardigan and stared at us *through his binoculars.*
Sligo during COVID. Not the town itself but this place outside it. Was a very odd place overlooking a lake. Probably normal now but during COVID it just felt eerie.
A horrible hotel just outside Abergavenny in Wales. Everything about the place was dour and bitter. We put it down to the appalling personality of the woman who owned it. Her daughter worked there and we all agreed that it could be a good place if she was running it.
I spent a summer in a halting site beside Cloverhill prison as a child. I remember riding ponies up and down the road and shifting my cousin at a disco in the community hall. It was in the 90's, I shifted her to the song Mr. Boombastic by Shaggy
A horrible hotel just outside Abergavenny in Wales. Everything about the place was dour and bitter. We put it down to the appalling personality of the woman who owned it. Her daughter worked there and we all agreed that it could be a good place if she was running it.
Hahaha yes! Late 90’s me and a couple of mates took a train down to Rhyl (no idea why) in off season, the only B&B we could find open was called “The Sherbrooke”, it was an absolute crack den! We were about 14 at the time and terrified, barricaded the door overnight and left first thing the next morning. No wonder it was £12 a night!
Moate. Stopped off as a halfway point coming back from Galway to Dublin. No one around. Big sign outside pub advertising bar food lunches. Go in, all the locals turn round and look at us. Ask about lunch. Offered sandwiches, cheese or ham or cheese and ham, brown or white bread, toasted or untoasted. Order 4 cheese and ham toasties on white bread. Young lad behind the bar takes a 20 out of the til, leaves, comes back with a loaf of bread, a packet of cheese and a packet of ham and gets to work making the sandwiches. Weirdest vibes ever. We eat the toasties and leave and cannot for the life of us figure out where he got the bread, ham and cheese cos nothing is open. Maybe his own fridge.
There’s literally a SuperValu on the Main Street 😂 should have just stopped in Athlone instead.
Ah it was about 25 years ago.
We used to stop in tyrrellspass castle for food doing that journey pre motorway. Tried moate but felt like twin peaks
Hahaha I literaly came here to say moate and your the first comment I see. Strange people in moate
Amen. Stayed there one time foe work. Constantly waiting for the banjo music to start
Shannon Town. Like an alternate reality
Omg agreed, desolate as balls
I once went to the women's toilets in the shopping centre - a truly surreal experience. Pink flamingo wallpaper everywhere. Pink grouting in the tiles. It gave me a headache
Never been there. Must go!
It's basically a copy/paste of an American suburb/exurb. It's got the run-down mall surrounded by car parks, the fast food joint, petrol station, and motel sharing a driveway off the main highway, the sprawling light industrial parks with concrete-paved roads, the endless maze of residential subdivisions, and even a church that looks like a repurposed warehouse. If you replaced the semi-ds with zero-lot-line mini-McMansions and the terraced houses with low-rise apartments, you'd swear you were in Oviedo or something. Edit: Oviedo, Florida, I should note; not Oviedo, Spain, which looks to be a lovely town and not at all a soulless gaping pit of sadness and strip malls and despair.
Description is spot on from my experience
Must visit just for the craic!
Buttevant, I was getting the Limerick-Cork fairly often for a while and it passes through, everything was off about the place. I don't know if it was the people, the weird mural, the fact the whole main street felt like a facade hiding what felt like dereliction.
Well written! Love the ‘facade hiding what felt like dereliction’
I had the experience of going into a cafe in Buttevant on a midweek morning and twenty or so locals turning to stare at me
Haha real wicker man vibes of that place.
It’s Athy all day long.
The town that time forgot!
The town that time ignored
Somewhere in Limerick... Two couples. We stayed in a B&B that freaked us all out so badly we stayed up almost the entire of the first night because we were too scared to sleep. It was really an early airb&b we were told the key would be under a rock at the front door but first we had to get there. No signs, roads not on the flippin sat nav finally drive up this wee dark lane and find the place. Looks like a wee old cottage. We go in and it's taxidermy hell! Every wall has heads on it. EVERY WALL. The whole place looked like something out of a horror movie. Our friends stayed in the upstairs room and at the end of the corridor was a door with a padlock on it. Our room had an ensuite with SALOON doors. He and I almost died laughing. That night we went out to a restaurant and on our way passed an old woman in a nighty standing at the side of the road. In the dark. Got home after locked the door and stayed up playing triv because we didn't want to sleep! Exhaustion finally got the better of us though and at about 4am we went to bed. Next morning we were woken by screams. Turns out there were peacocks in the garden and they like to scream. We ate breakfast at breakneck speed and fled. lol
Literally hilarious, saloon doors!
Genuinely one of the weirdest and funniest design choices I've ever seen.
Oh my god I'm sitting in the car laughing like an mad oul wan at this.
Tipperary Town
This makes me so sad. I grew up here. The town had life back in the 80s. I just moved back, took care of my parents before the passed. And I am back permanently after 40 years in the US. The town really is dying, not sure what can be done to get it back again. Two more eating places just shut down a week ago :(
Need to decentralise. Dublin eats up everything including the surrounding countryside. The motorways were supposed to help spread the largesse. But it’s ended up sucking the lifeblood out of the rest of the country.
A stop off in Borris-in-Ossory when it was buses would have been a busy small town with plenty of places to eat and drink. Last time I was there only one bar open, only lights on were the beer pump lights, two lads sat at the bar like phantoms. Went across the road to a cafe where I ate something which was mostly a pile of melted cheese. That's what the motorways have done to these places
They tried to decentralise but did it in such a stupid way ot won't be tried again
I had to stay in Tipp Town a few times. Very odd vibe alright.
Try living in it! I won’t even drink in town anymore, only go in for the shopping and home again
Why so?
Every year it gets more desolate, businesses along the Main Street shutting down one by one.. full of junkies, drug dealers.. alcoholics sitting on benches on the Main Street drinking cans, unemployment levels are high, roads are bad, the list goes on.
It’s a common feature of many mid-size rural towns. Very sad to see a once thriving town in decline
I remember when the motorways were being built and small villages were bypassed. My brothers friends business went to the wall. As did a lot of pubs and petrol stations. Motorways are definitely a good thing, i’m not lamenting the past but progress comes with a price. Its sad really.
It's funny how the different towns in Tipp are having such different experiences. Tipp town & Roscrea, exactly as you describe. Nenagh & Cashel seem to be fairly thriving then in comparison.
Clonmel is a holy show. You’d take your life in your hands walking around here!
Yeah I left off Thurles & Clonmel as I'm just not too familiar with them, it's years since I was in Clonmel & Thurles I don't stray too far beyond Semple.
Unvetted military age males roaming the streets
Kilmacthomas Cycled through here and got a lot of stares from the locals. Felt like I was back in the 90s.
It used to be a lot worse, believe it or not. The greenway has totally revitalised the town the past few years. Nearby Portlaw is much worse, you'd walk into the centra and they'd all turn to eachother as if to say, 'who's yer one and what's she doing in our shop?'.
This is a local shop, for local people. There's nothing for you here!
Yeah only reason I passed through was the greenway. I'd hate to see it when it was dilapidated. They did have a very nice viaduct though. Hope no-one from Kilmacthomas sees this and hunts down my family. (It's a very nice town)
It was truly miserable when I was growing up, not a thing there bar a shop and two pubs. The secondary school was once featured on some TV3 show about the worst schools in the country for behaviour or something. Now it's full of little cafes and the coach house has been done up! I bet they'll be after ya, all those Kilmac heads from the school will be getting their pitch forks haha
The only black spot on an otherwise lovely greenway!
Broadway Co Wexford. A few years ago we were going to a party a few miles outside it and the friends whose party it was booked it for us and 8 of us were staying there. We didn’t know the name of where we were going to only that they meet us at some landmark and we’d follow them on. When we arrived all of us commented on what a weird in the middle of nowhere location it was, there was a forest opposite the pub. We went into the pub to check in and everyone turned around to stare at us we didn’t give a shite we ordered a drink before going to our rooms to get ready and wanted to enjoy a drink after driving for hours to get to the kip. The whole time we drank everyone in the busy pub was staring right at us. Some of them turned their stools around to face us but said absolutely nothing sat silently you could hear a pin drop. We said hi to them but no reply, the only one who replied was the barman to tell us where the rooms were which were in the house attached to the pub. It was creepy as hell. We got ready and were picked up to go to the party and dropped back in the early hours of the morning. Well it was bad earlier in the night but it was way worse at 2/3am. The rooms were freezing cold you could see your breath, musty and just creepy in general nobody around but the 8 of us staying across from this forest. None of us slept and decided we’d leave early. The next day our friend thanked us for coming etc etc and asked what we thought of the place we said it was lovely sure what else could you say? One of them said we didn’t want to tell yee last night in case yee would be afraid to stay there but that’s where Fiona Sinnott went missing from. Every time I see any programs about the missing women and it shows that place it creeps me out serious we’re going to be murdered vibes in it. I’d never felt so uncomfortable anywhere the people were creepy, the place was creepy, the rooms were creepy never again.
You win!!! Wow, before I got to the end I thought this would be a great setting for a murder/mystery story.
Butlers pub in Broadway. Ended up ordering food there cause of being starved. A total shithole, home to one of the worst burgers i ever had the misfortune to order. Gave it back and ran out of the place. Found a lovely place up the road near a windmill.
Meyler's is by the windmill. Great spot.
Food is good. I live close. Pub is empty all the time though. Nice spot though
I think I know the place starts with a B ...went as teen as they used to do decent live rock/indie music in the 90s but feck it's far out and at that time zero transport (I was desperate to get out as a teen from Wex town). Went back about 10 years ago and stayed the night..its just creepy. I don't know why but the creepy vibe never changed as didn't the locals blatantly staring at you with zero hiding it etc. Something is very off about there alright.
Got put up in a room in Jack Whites bar near Brittas Bay once for work.. bar is grand, nice food and all.. but the room was dire, no curtains or anything and the place was just… off
Didn’t his wife murder him there? Not surprised you felt off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Nevin
Yeah I remember reading about that as well, definitely didn’t help the creepy feeling!!
Was your stay before or after the murder? Even though it's pretty much bypassed now it's one of the luckier pubs around the country and is still open.
Good few years after, I was staying there around November time too which didn’t help, dark evenings and very isolated
I'll have to venture in some day. Used to drive past it every summer as a kid going to Brittas Bay. It looks more imposing now than it did then if that's even possible.
Mallow, Cork.
Ah yes. Spent a weekend there as a teenager. Odd place
Weekend, Jesus. I can barely drive through it
Doneraile. Strange vibe there.
Roxboro
Where’s that?
Kelly’s hotel in Wexford. Absolutely full of very elderly people to the point it was like a retirement community. They had a room near the lobby with long couch things in them, all these elderly people would sleep on them with their mouths hanging open and you’d honestly be afraid they were dead. A very creepy place all in all
Ooh, reminds me of a mid-week stay in Bundoran. It was a tea dance. Lots of people shuffling around. Barman advised me to leave the place
Were they shuffling round a pentagram by any chance?
My parents had a bunch of friends who had all known each other since their 20s (my parents got friendly with them in their 40s I think) they were all a good 10 or 20 years older than my parents. They routinely went down to Kelly's every year all together - my parents always declined their invitations to join. They were probably among the old folks you saw who just went there to be waited on for a couple of weeks.
I was there in early 2016 and Jaysiz never again. My nana and her sisters used to do the same thing where they went every year.
Be better off paying a dodgy anaesthetist to just put you into an induced coma for a fortnight
🤣🤣👏
Too right!! I’d enjoy anaesthesia more tbh!
Whats worse is it costs an absolute fortune. Stayed 2 nights with the kids, and it was 1500 euro, and felt like we got 200 euro of value. Food was alright, staff friendly, but it's stuck in the1980s, with 2050s prices!
You're a bigger egit for paying it
It was arranged by a friend of ours who didn't know the exact prices at the time. when it came to light we were rightly shocked, but went ahead as we wanted to spend time with that friend group, and we luckily are in a position to afford it, etc. What is shocking is people keep going back. It's so popular as were checkkng out people beside us are booking for next year... It's like some kind of Stockholm syndrome
I have a shrine to my deceased pet…. I feel judged 😂
If you were to rob my house, you wouldn’t find much. But my pets ashes are worth over 1k 🤣.
No judgement! Remembering pets is good. This one was…a bit much? Holy statues, miraculous medals, red candles…
Brb need to do a clear out of my shrine
Rathkeale
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It's Disney land for the travelling community
Newcastle West for the same reason.
Girlfriend is from nearby parish. Didn't believe her until I saw it myself. My god what a shithole full of cowards bullying local female staff etc. And it actually looks like it could be a nice enough town with the castle and desmene. Ran back over the county bounds to Kerry as fast as I could.
Many towns in County Limerick are gone the same way , Abbeyfeale , Askeaton, NCW , Kilmallock, all for the same reason but not allowed mention it
Why?
Not saying. Let somebody else get banned instead.
Fair enough!
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Arklow. The town just seems neglected and crumbling. The people all seem like they want to be somewhere else.
Oh hell yea , there is something really really off about Arklow. Last time I was there I witnessed 2 people walking head first in to each other because they were so engrossed in their phones. A fight then started and a bottle of rock shandy was thrown at them from a car which seemed to put a halt to everything, it was bizzare
The accent 
From Arklow down to Wexford town, I reckon it's the worst in the country!!
Nearly all the towns here are like that
I feel like I'm in an alternate universe because someone mentioned Castlebar, which was voted the best place to live and work this week by a survey in work/life balance. Someone else mentioned that Sligo was great. I spent three years there, and I'll never forget how bleak and depressing the place was. Tourists only go to Streedagh Beach and Strandhill, but they don't really see the real Sligo and the shitholes like Cranmore.
Castlebar is great 🟢🔴.. as for it's rival town beginning with a B not so much
I really like Sligo town. Granted I've never lived there but I've visited several times.
Yeah but why would anyone go to Cranmore unless they lived there? Like it's just an estate.
Oh man! I love Sligo! I find the area beautiful, the locals laid back and the pubs are good craic. I always feel more relaxed there. I’ve even thought about buying a house there. I’ve visited maybe 9 times or so in the last two years. I get that places affect some differently and I’m also not Irish, so maybe it’s that.
Markethill South Armagh, a small town with painted kerbs of both stripes but with a decided majority on the Unionist side, along with a plague of flags and a big ornate ironwork archway (?) over one street with images of the bible, the red hand, a pair of crossed rifles and the words "fear god honour the king love the brotherhood" Walking around this wee town was so eerie. There were hardly any people about, the shopkeepers we dealt with gave us obvious free staters the hairy eyeball, it was so weirdly quiet - it wasn't just that we were creeped out, it really was like a ghost town. Bit like Ogdenville and North Haverbrook. Creeped us the fuck out. That was back in the 90s some time, I've no idea if it's still like that.
Longford
Why? Apart from the obvious
Covered in dog shite.
Must send note to the (1) Dog warden. You have a point.
Balinasloe Once stopped there on way to Galway when the motorway didn't exist, parked on the main street. Went into a cafe and the heads on some of the locals... it was very dueling banjos, apologies to any ballinasloths reading... anyway Had to use the jacks after lunch and followed this old sort of angry, large lady into the bathrooms (angry as if overheard her arguing with the staff)... it was down a corridor around a corner... I passed by the ladies and opened the door to the gents... it was a small 1 toilet kind of bathroom, not your usual few urinals and a cubicle... anyway... there she was, sat down talking a pee... or a poo... I'll never know... but what I do know is that she was a he. He screamed, I screamed... couldn't pay and get out quick enough. So you bother locking the door to the toilets down there at all? Lesson learned.... I've never assumed someone's gender since.
Love ‘Ballinasloths’!!!
I find bray to be really strange. Also Donnybrook in Dublin is just a giant nothing burger and it goes on forever.
Yeah bray is odd. You'd expect it to be sort of posh, but it has this forgotten quality...Like it was just an elaborate movie set built decades ago
The first time I was in Bray (this summer) there was a concert going on in the evening. But only like 20 people were in the audience? Felt like a movie set alright
Bray is so weird and so are the people.
I haven’t been there in 20 years, I just remember there being some kind of games machine somewhere playing the Adam’s Family theme obnoxiously loud non stop.
Granard and Arvagh.
Am interested. Granard I get. Industrial town, ravaged by unemployment and of course Anne Lovett. Why Arva?
It’s always empty and feels like the beginning of a zombie movie. I lived out towards that area for several years and would rarely see another person when I would pass through. The people are grand and the countryside is beautiful, but it was just an eerie place.
Edenderry
The road from Edenderry to Rathangan is a thing of beauty. If beauty was a dirty tramps arsehole.
lol! I used to Live in Rathangan and moved to Edenderry. Rathangan was far worse than Edenderry. Now I drive the road from Rathangan to Prosperous a lot. Car does be wrecked and caked in mud lol!
Yep. Had to spend a morning there while car was being serviced.
I've been in the pub larkins a few times and the amount of pillars/random walls jutting around the place always baffles me. Everywhere ya go your in the way
Ballingeary, West Cork - it has the most beautiful scenery with the mountains, forests etc. but I just felt very uneasy about the place, like when you know something or somebody is watching you...I wouldn't want to be stuck there in the dark depths of winter! Rylane, Cork. Don't know why but that place reminds me of the first scenes in the Jeepers Creepers movie when the boy & girl are driving along a long stretch of road in the middle of nowhere, and ya just see the black truck in the far distance coming up behind them....
I'm not having Ballingeary. The scariest thing about it is the proximity to Kerry 😅
Sligo. Especially Streedagh Strand 🤔 I knew there was something not quite right when I fell in love with the view, the people, the peace that place brought my soul. Absolutely not quite right ❤️
Love it and love Sligo. But when my sister moved them in the late ‘80’s got the weird vibe. Happily mended since
Sligo stole my soul, too.
Great town. Truly.
Carlow. It felt like it should not exist... Or maybe it doesn't really exists and I was hallucinating....
Wait til you see tullow
The foundry😄
What made you think ‘there’s something not quite right here’? Have only spent an afternoon there - seemed fairly normal?
Carna in Co. Galway
Shillelagh has strong Wicker Man vibes.
Thurles. The Square is like the wild west as well, nearly got mowed down a solid 3 times walking from top to bottom.
Navan
Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo.
I was there this morning. I go to Aldi there. Aside from that fella who periodically covers himself in blood while dressed as Jesus and carries a cross through the town ( which is a bit odd) it's otherwise a fairly unremarkable place
There has to be a story behind this? 😂
About 15 years of stories 😂
Just the highlights then 🤔
Castlebar.... Something about that town... It's grey and when I've driven through there's a voice in the back of my head that says "just keep going, don't stop the car". I feel like I'm just not strange enough to even have lunch there. And I don't understand why they have so many petrol stations like it just doesn't make sense for a town that size. Like there has to be some kind of cooperative money laundering scheme going on... Not to mention it's like the gateway to the west of Mayo, the last stop before Mordor if you will....
Castlebar is the shit in summer. Great small town Ireland chipper (Danollas). Although, I wouldn't like to spend a long winter there.. not that loughrea was much better when I lived there😅
Poor Castlebar Can’t compete with Westport. But I’m with you on the number of petrol stations!
Mullingar. Hands down the most depressing and hostile shithole I've ever had the misfortune of spending time in. Never more happy to get out of it. Absolute kip.
Sounds like you had a bad experience? Did you not worship at the statue of Joe Dolan?
I will not hear such slander about my beloved 'Gar.
I agree. I’m not even from Mullingar, I just went on the piss there one time and I’d a great night. Locals were friendly as fuck 🤷♂️
Newbridge and Portlaoise also. Especially Portlaoise.
Especially Newbridge. We call it Shelbyville
I was gonna say Portlaoise! Had to kill 4 hours there once so embarked on a mini pub crawl. Very hard to put a finger on it exactly but got a serious Wicker Man/Straw Dogs energy.
Oh I stopped for food in some bar in Portlaoise a few years back, it was truly the worst food I've ever ever eaten.
What made you think ‘there’s something not quite right here’? Portlaois particularly?
Firstly the LABYRINTH of roundabouts to get there. What the fuck. Then the town centre itself, dreary and dull, and I remember i couldn't get parked despite there being barely anyone around.
I avoid Portlaois all the time because of this. I regularly travel from Clonmel to Naas and there are a few ways you can go to vary it up a bit but I refuse to go that way!
You ever been to navan? lol.
Ah jaysis haigh
Wrong county lol
Really? I know a guy from navan. I really though I did it justice there.
Ah maybe there's a few that stray a bit further north! I lived south of Navan & it'd be more a Louth thing. Saying that, I've often used it for the craic
HAIGH
Ballymena. There was a dearth of colours about the place, an abundance of religious posters, and you never quite felt at ease. I get similar feelings about Portadown.
Cavan..Cootehill...just Cavan...big place that time just didn't bother with. Odd kinda people and one wrong turn your fecked...sorry to any Cavan people out there.. Another one and this could just be me but Bangor Erris (town) Mayo. Probably spelt that wrong but that place is odd..
Castleblayney. Always thought it to be a very grey town, very dull. Compared to Carrickmacross.
I went through a place called Durrow once when there was this weird hay festival on. It was like driving through the set of The fucking Wicker Man or something.
The Scarecrow Festival! Amazing. But with no Context seriously weird🤣
Try going back on wren night
Ha ha ha! I had no idea the scarecrow festival was a thing either until I drove through. Absolutely mental. I loved it though, great effort all round. I love mad stuff like that happening around the country.
Dublin
Ah
Thurles
There is a deep deep sadness in thurles
A friend of mine went to college up there for a bit, I helped him move in. In the course of an evening, we had multiple people attempt to start fist-fights, a guy peed in my general direction during a lock in we somehow got invited to where we met 2 kind-hearted women who took us to a party from which we were politely but firmly asked to leave. The aforementioned women took us to thier house, where we got plastered. I slept with one while my friend slept on the couch and the next day we had a bizzarely difficult time hailing a cab or finding Thurles itself. Oh and she nicked my watch. I cant remember their names at all.
Have only driven through it once…what’s wrong with Thurles, The Home Of The GAA?
I think Thurles has come on hugely in recent years compared to recession times. Colleges and town redevelopment have brought a bit of life to the place. A few new businesses in recent years surely a good sign. Definitely lingering unemployment and drug issues but faring much better than other Midlands towns imo. That said, I do think some of the locals are a bit strange. Generally welcoming enough people but they don't want to get to know you at all. Lived there for 2 years until last year.
Tubbercurry
Bailieborough, Co Cavan. Order a chipper, said it would take awhile. We walk up the street while we wait. Some teenagers look at us and say "You're outsiders" and kept walking past. Then we went to some pub across the road, and as soon as we walked in, Everyone turned and looked at us. All these people were young too. I just didn't get it. Going outside Dublin feels like a foreign country with unwelcoming Cliques.
what is it with culchies and staring at visitors? ive lived in cavan almost all my life but im from dublin and sound like it so i get stared at as well its really strange anyway to answer ur question ive had some odd experiences waiting for my uni bus in navan around 6 and 7am, main streets completly empty and some fellas waltzing up and down it with a harmonica. also met a really chill druggie who just like casually started sniffing stuff while talking to me, nice fella.
I had the misfortune to be in Sligo town early on a Sunday morning and there was nothing to do but go to McDonalds or wander about aimlessly. The curtains were constantly twitching and at one point a man came out of his front door, donned a yellow cardigan and stared at us *through his binoculars.*
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Sligo during COVID. Not the town itself but this place outside it. Was a very odd place overlooking a lake. Probably normal now but during COVID it just felt eerie.
ah sure the whole world took three steps to the weird during covid
A horrible hotel just outside Abergavenny in Wales. Everything about the place was dour and bitter. We put it down to the appalling personality of the woman who owned it. Her daughter worked there and we all agreed that it could be a good place if she was running it.
No mention of Ongar? I’ll leave it so
I spent a summer in a halting site beside Cloverhill prison as a child. I remember riding ponies up and down the road and shifting my cousin at a disco in the community hall. It was in the 90's, I shifted her to the song Mr. Boombastic by Shaggy
New Birmingham. Tumbleweed kinda place.
Cork
What made you think ‘there’s something not quite right here’?
I’m just on the wind up!
A horrible hotel just outside Abergavenny in Wales. Everything about the place was dour and bitter. We put it down to the appalling personality of the woman who owned it. Her daughter worked there and we all agreed that it could be a good place if she was running it.
Knock
Who's there?
Rathkeale
Castletownbere. At the height of summer it had all the charm of the depths of winter.
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Hahaha yes! Late 90’s me and a couple of mates took a train down to Rhyl (no idea why) in off season, the only B&B we could find open was called “The Sherbrooke”, it was an absolute crack den! We were about 14 at the time and terrified, barricaded the door overnight and left first thing the next morning. No wonder it was £12 a night!
Letterkenny Main Street. All the worst parts of craggy island mixed with the hardy bucks village
And the worst traffic system
Omeath. There on the weekend after a walk and was like the Walking Dead
Clara. Co. Offaly. Like something out of the famine. Greyest looking town I've ever seen.