[RWD version 1 ] This very short, wooded pilgrim path is along the river Bride from the historic Doonpeter Cemetery to the secluded mass rock at Carraig an Aifrinn.
Doonpeter Cemetery is in a field and surrounded by a circular ditch. It is accessed from the public road at W70013 89086. This cemetery dates from pre-Christian times and, apparently, the Summer Solstice was celebrated here, which morphed into the Christian feast day of St. John's Eve on 23rd June, originally being one of only two Christian feast days, the other being Christmas Day. The cemetery contains St. John's Well, and also the foundations of a church that was razed to the ground in 1599 by Hugh O'Neill before the Battle of Kinsale because the local Lord Barrymore refused to join him. As unconsecrated ground, the cemetery also contains a burial plot for unbaptised children, nowadays tended with care. A burial mound in another part of the cemetery contains famine victims, including some who built the adjoining famine road. An alleged informer was shot and secretly buried here after the Battle of Clonmult during the War of Independence.
The wooded and picturesque pilgrim path was a mass path during penal times. It crosses the Bride by a makeshift footbridge that replaces a bridge was was washed away by floods. Part of this path was a famine road, in reality a road to nowhere, which emerges at Chimneyfield at the other end onto the public road at W68435 90160.
Crossing this public road, it is just a short walk to the mass rock itself at Carraig an Aifrinn, which is sign-posted. This mass rock had been completely overgrown by the 1960s when local people restored it to its original state, and it is again used for worship, where the congregation is largely separated from the celebrant at the rock by the fast flowing river. The mass rock is so secluded that one is taken unawares when the amphitheatre-like setting reveals itself.