The Brandy Pad was an old Smugglers route in the eighteen hundreds, Brandy and others sprits, wine, spices, tobacco, tea, coffee, suger and silk made their way to the secluded coves of the Mourne coast via the Isle of Man which was outside the control of the customs and excise at the time, then they would have used the Brandy Pad to cross the top of the two valleys until , upon reaching the Hares Gap smaller groups would have despersed in different directions to get out of the Mountains. Bloody Bridge was originally a ford, the name refers to a massacre at the site at the time of the 1641 rebellion, the bodies of slain prisoners were thrown over the bridge into the river, turning it red and so the river became know as the Bloody Bridge River.