There was a definite 'siege mentality' – and even a bit of craic in the bar – as some exhausted travellers bedded down on camp beds at one Loughrea hotel along the flooded Dublin to Galway road on Thursday night.

Its location was most definitely not chosen for this purpose.

But if you were going to build a hotel to profit from any floods between Loughrea and Galway city, you could hardly do better than the site of the 16-month old Lough Rea hotel and spa along the Galway road.

Its operations manager, Barry Kilroy, looked exhausted yet remarkably upbeat as he recalled the trickle which soon became a human flood of people looking for somewhere, anywhere to lay their heads on Thursday evening.

Most had been beaten back after trying in vain to get to Galway by road via the badly flooded town of Craughwell.

Earlier that morning, the hotel had around 20 guests booked into 10 or so rooms.

Fast forward to 6pm, and all 91 of its rooms had gone, meaning it had to resort to offering camp beds and a place on one of its conference room floors to some desperate visitors.

At one stage, there was a waiting list of 30 people for even this far-from-luxurious accommodation.

"The road at Craughwell shut down after 3pm, and by 7pm the bridge had finally gone. People were spending seven to eight hours in lines of traffic, and were coming in here looking for bedrooms," he explained.

"It just turned into a chaotic day. We had the gardaí and civil defence in for soup and sandwiches throughout the night too."

Staff at the hotel were meanwhile doing their best to find alternative accommodation for those who could not get a bed at the Lough Rea, but many were told that other places were full up too, Kilroy said.

Yet despite being tired and hungry – the hotel's restaurant had lengthy delays at times due to sheer demand – there was a certain camaraderie in the hotel's bar later in the evening.

"We thought there would be anger there, but while some were understandably frustrated, even at the bar everybody helped each other out. Some people were offering to share rooms and everything," Kilroy said.

The Sunday Tribune did not investigate whether this led to the blossoming of any new romances.

Earlier on Thursday afternoon, this reporter almost got stuck on several occasions along the back roads to Tuam, with water up as far as the car bonnet at one stage.

Every now and then, cars would pull up alongside each other, allowing occupants to discuss strategies for negotiating the storm through rolled-down windows.

All around, while the rain poured down, fields and outhouses were heavily waterlogged, looking to all intents and purposes like lakes.

The Road Safety Authority's eminently sensible advice was not to drive through any floods which appeared impassable.

But faced with the prospect of either taking their chances by doing exactly this, or being left stranded on an isolated country road with night approaching, few if any appeared to be heeding its wise counsel.