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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
National
Clare McCarthy

Inside the forgotten Irish hotel abandoned six years ago with everything left behind

A menu still sitting on a table in the restaurant and a perfectly made-up hotel bedroom - although everything is now completely overgrown with moss.

This what you can expect to find inside an abandoned hotel in Donegal which overlooks the stunning bay Magheraclogher Bay along Donegal's Wild Atlantic Way.

Once a favourite holiday destination of football legend George Best in the 1970s and 80s, the Ostan Gweedore has been left vacant for around six years and has since fallen into decay.

READ MORE: Irish person’s rant about tiny hotel orange juice glasses leaves people divided

Urban explorer Jamie Robinson went back inside to document what the forgotten 32-bedroom hotel looks like now.

He filmed a hotel tour and uploaded the clip to TikTok, where it received over 300k views.

Ostan Gweedore bedroom (TikTok/@jamierob2)

The hotel is eerily frozen in time with the beds still made in the bedrooms but black mould now covers the walls and moss and plants have taken over the rooms.

In the clip, Jamie said: "Everything's literally untouched. Beds are made still but the moss is just growing all around it.

"The bed and all are made everything's just left perfect the mirror, the hair dryer, everything just the moss has just overgrown at all."

He explores the hotel bar, restaurant, and leisure centre to find a huge half-empty swimming pool now filled with plastic chairs and rubbish.

From the balcony of the hotel, there is a view over the bay where you can see the famous Bád Eddie shipwreck, a fishing vessel that was washed up on the beach in the 1970s.

People took to the comments to voice their surprise that the hotel was abandoned.

One TikTok user wrote: "That view is stunning... how did that hotel fail? The location alone should have had it fully booked."

Another suggested: "That could be fixed up and used for homeless refugees cheaper than rents and expensive hotels."

One person who previously visited the hotel said: "My goodness, we were on that beach every summer!! It was a grand hotel! Went for lunch once!!"

The Ostan Gweedore was previously owned by the local Boyle family, but has been vacant since 2016 when it was put up for auction by receivers acting on behalf of the banks with a reserve price of €590,000. Six holiday apartments and a leisure centre with a swimming pool on 76 acres were included in the lot.

View over Magheraclogher Bay from Ostan Gweedore (TikTok/@jamierob2)

But it looks like the hotel won't lay empty for much longer.

Planning permission was granted in 2022 for a €15 million euro refurbishment of the Ostan Gweedore and the nearby Seaview Hotel by Vesada Private Ltd.

They plan to transform the Ostan Gweedore into a four-star Aparthotel with self-catering units added to the rooms in the main building.

Once the two hotels are reopened, it would create up to 80 jobs in the local area.

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