The Trail Smugglers Wore Into the Mountain

There is a path in the High Mournes that no engineer planned and no council laid. It was carved into the granite by hooves — hundreds of ponies, loaded with brandy, tobacco, silk, and tea, driven through the mountains under cover of darkness for the best part of two centuries. The Brandy Pad is still there. You can walk it today. The line of the track is so deeply worn into the hillside that it shows pale against the dark heather, visible from half a mile away.

It began at Droichead na Fola — Bloody Bridge — a small stone crossing where a mountain river meets the coast road three miles south of Newcastle. Ships from the Isle of Man, France, and the Channel Islands would anchor offshore after dark, and smaller boats ran the cargo to the rocky shore. Brandy, wine, spirits, tobacco, leather, silk, spices — anything the Crown taxed heavily enough to make the risk worthwhile. Waiting hands loaded the goods onto ponies, and the climb began.

From Bloody Bridge the route climbed steeply, passing beneath Slievenaglogh, skirting the flanks of Slieve Corragh and Slieve Commedagh, before threading through the narrow defile of Hare’s Gap — Bealach Mór, ‘the great pass.’ This was the crux of the journey. The granite walls of the pass rise sharply on both sides, funnelling wind, weather, and any man foolish enough to follow. On a clear night the smugglers could see the stars. On a bad night, they saw nothing at all.

The pass sits between Sliabh Bearnach (Slieve Bearnagh — ‘the gapped mountain’) and Slieve Meelmore, two of the most dramatic peaks in the range. Even today, with nothing to carry and no Revenue men to outrun, Hare’s Gap feels like a place where the mountains close in and the sky opens up. The smugglers knew this ground the way a fisherman knows a harbour mouth — by feel, by instinct, by the shape of the wind.

Beyond Hare’s Gap the landscape softened. The smugglers descended through the Trassey valley toward Hilltown (Baile an Chnoic), a small market village on the northern slopes of the Mournes. Hilltown was the distribution hub — the place where contraband changed hands, where money was counted, and where the whole operation dispersed into the countryside. From Hilltown, the goods spread across County Down and into the inns, parlours, and merchant houses of Belfast.

The Revenue men knew, of course. They patrolled the coast and sometimes ventured into the foothills. But the mountains were the smugglers’ territory. The high passes, the sudden mist, the boulder fields, the intimate knowledge of every sheep track and river crossing — the Mournes were an almost impenetrable barrier to law enforcement. The smugglers knew paths the mapmakers hadn’t drawn. They knew where the mist pooled. They knew which stream to follow and which to cross.

It went on for the best part of two centuries. By the time the trade finally died out in the mid-19th century — undercut by lower tariffs and better policing — the ponies had worn a permanent track into the mountainside. The Brandy Pad. A trail no one planned, built by nothing but repetition and nerve.

The Brandy Pad is now one of the classic hill walks in Northern Ireland. The route from Bloody Bridge to Hare’s Gap and down through the Trassey valley is roughly 12 kilometres, crossing some of the wildest and most spectacular terrain in the range. You’re not following a waymarked tourist trail — you’re following the exact line that smugglers and their ponies walked for two hundred years.

The track is clearest on the approach to Hare’s Gap, where the pale line of the path stands out against the dark heather and peat. At the pass itself, you cross the Mourne Wall via a stile — the dry-stone wall built between 1904 and 1922 to protect Belfast’s water catchment. Beyond, the view opens across the Trassey valley and the rolling farmland beyond, and you can see the country the smugglers were heading for. Guided walks are available through Mountain Ways Ireland for those who prefer local expertise and company.