Tales of the Urban Explorer: Lakeside Restaurant

“Jeez.. I wish they would just fuck off”, I muttered to @anidiotexplorers with a frown.

A family with two small kids aged around seven to nine were milling around the perimeter of 'Lakeside Restaurant', a former Bengali eatery just outside Doncaster, South Yorkshire.

...'what could they possibly desire from this wretched place: a stale insect ridden Jalfrezi, or a Vindaloo covered in the finest green mold?'...

Fucking people, they don't half get in our way when it comes to exploring.

We breezed past the astonished looking family looking for a way in, regardless of the odd looks we are now accustomed to and short of scaling the rickety 'herras' fencing came to a blank.

'Lakeside Restaurant' has been visited by everyone, even small babies fresh and crinkly from the womb solo it, so there was no way we were giving up so easily.

Said family, intent on watching us for entertainment, appeared disappointed when we fell back with our tails between our legs..

...'the show was over, they had given up'...

Ha.. but that's an advanced tactic to make nosey bastards piss off more quickly, and piss off they did.

Lakeside Restaurant offered a buffet-style dining and takeaway service until its closure in early 2011. The reasons for its closure are not documented. It has sat unused since them, decaying more with each passing year.

Approaching from the rear, it was still an awkward entrance for such a derpy looking shithole, but we got in without any scrapes or bruises via an upper doorway and up a ropey-looking stairway.

Entering a large room, overlooking the lake (which looked to me more like a dirty swamp), and with fabulous views of the local crocodiles, we gaped aghast.

The windows are now non-existent, but may have been closed permanently when 'Lakeside Restaurant' was open and doing business.

Unless you want to share your tasty Madras with a swarm of biting, buzzing insects, that is?

£7.95 for all you can eat; it takes me back to when food was affordable and eating out was a more regular occurrence. Now it's more like £50+ for a decent meal for two unless you eat at those cheap-arse Hungry Horse outlets.

A handy business card, should I have taken one in case I wanted a take-out? So tempting.., that flavoursome Korma could be delivered right to my door.

Why do twats have to spoil the view with terrible cock scrawls, and never mind the remnants of an illegal ganja farm?

No doubt some of the old cannabis plants were here once, some in the loft perhaps, with the looks of this.

'Lakeside Restaurant' does not open until 5.30 pm on Sundays. That explains the lack of staff taking orders. It was starting to make sense.

£13.55 for the most expensive item on the menu, and considering 'Lakeside Restaurant' went bust in 2011, that does seem rather cheap.

'High Class', it claims. Who am I to dispute that?

Having entered via the aforementioned stairs, this time it was a descent to see what was on offer below.

Yes, more wankers…, we have seen it all before.

Can I take your order, sir?

Coca-Cola Enterprises is affiliated with Coca-Cola. I wanted to check as they are using the official logo brand.

Best quality rustic ingredients, don't they look just yum?

Did the ex-shoe owner lose it because he ate too much? I do wonder.

A poor attempt at prohibiting access. While it may be a little awkward, even fatty me can bypass this with relative ease.

Very nice, but maybe a little unfinished. I recognise the style and it's not 'Trench'.

With the looks of things, the entrance to ‘Lakeside Restaurant’. When your seating is ready, the main section is likely up the stairs so you can gaze over the swam.., er lake.

Even if I wanted to get close to the front door, the sheer amount of broken tiles was making such an aspiration a little difficult.

The remains of 'Lakeside Restaurant's furniture? We had to climb over all this shit just to see if anything was interesting on the far side.

More of the bloody stuff was all we found. The chairs and tables were smashed to pieces.

Now, why would you have something like this in a Bengali restaurant? For mixing the ingredients with drilled pieces of human brain matter? I should stop watching ‘Driller Killer’.

The flavoursome aromas that came from these grills once would have been overwhelming. For the record, most Brits love Indian food, and there's little doubt 'Lakeside Restaurant' would have been popular once.

If you ask me if it smelt like a dead decaying sheep’s arse, I would respond with, ‘I don’t remember’ and I do tend to remember when it’s particularly pungent.

Entering derelict kitchens can be a major health hazard, but any such deadly aromas had long since vacated.

Having found no better escape route, we had to backtrack to the upper areas and try our luck with the partially collapsing stairs once more.

Fortune was with us again, and off we went to the next terrible explore.

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