Landmines, snakes and divine visions on one of Europe's wildest cycling paths
experienced visions long before I reached Medjugorje, the remote town in the south of Bosnia and Herzegovina that is supposedly the site of apparitions of the Virgin Mary, as I cycled slowly up the seemingly endless switchbacks from Mostar on my heavily loaded touring bike.
Admittedly, they were visions of ice cold beer and a nice place to lie down, but this was not the first time I’d sought divine assistance on this particular holiday. The hill marked the end of a three-day ride from the Croatian seaside town of Dubrovnik, along a new cycle route called the Ciro Trail that follows the tracks of the old Austro-Hungarian railway line to Vienna. From the barren borderlands, still riddled with mines from the Bosnian War of Independence, through Hutovo Blato Nature Park and ending at the pretty town of Mostar, the mostly flat, traffic-free path passed crumbling railway stations, lofty monasteries and mountain watchtowers. It was desolate at its most remote - near the border at Ivanica - and it is amazing how religious you become when evenings are spent judiciously pitching a tent between landmine markers and very big snakes.
A diversion to Medjugorje - “between the mountains”, which I can confirm it definitely is - added a mere 10 miles to the 100-mile trail, and was impossible to pass up at a time when the town’s future as a pilgrimage site hangs in the balance. Once a small, predominantly Catholic Croat town, it was ravaged by a series of wartime atrocities including the massacre of hundreds of local Serbs in the 1940s by the Croatian Revolutionary Movement. A few decades later, in 1981, on a nearby hill in the small hamlet of Bijakovici close to their mass grave, six local children claimed to have seen visions of the Virgin Mary. The apparitions reportedly continued for several days, and some of the visionaries still claim to experience them to this day; meanwhile the countless pilgrims who have also reported seeing phenomena at the site have quickly turned Medjugorje into one of Europe’s most important pilgrimage spots. But it is also one of the most controversial, because the Vatican has refused to recognise the apparitions. In February Pope Francis ordered an ambassador to the site to conduct a Papal visitation, ostensibly to provide guidelines about pastoral care of pilgrims, although many anticipate a ruling on the site’s authenticity.
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