The Trassey Track, Mourne Mtns

Location: The Trassey Track viewed from Hare's Gap, Mourne Mountains, County Down, Northern Ireland
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Taken on a weekend of hiking through the mournes this summer. I was supervising a group of Duke of Edinburgh Award kids from my old school. I didn't walk along the track but instead opted to take the non traditional route of scrambling over the rocky bluffs in the far distance

The weather was quite changeable that weekend so photographic opportunities were few and far between. The clouds lifted in the afternoon and I got some nice shots of this well trodden location. It's one of the most popular routes through the mournes today, and also in the past, but for very different purposes>>>

Quoted from the BBC sub-site 'Off the Beaten Track':

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This walk takes you along the Trassey Track, part of "The Brandy Pad" a track created by the boots of smugglers and the hooves of heavily laden ponies, particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries. Illicit cargoes of tobacco, wine, spirits, leather, silk and spices would be spirited through the mountains from the east coast to be distributed inland. So popular was the trade that by 1835 in the village of Hilltown, almost half the houses were pubs.
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