Thursday 24 May 2012

Sarajevo (2), The Siege 1992-95: Part 2 of The Balkans

A Life Saving Tunnel, Attrocities and the Vratnic Citadel

Bosnia and Heregovina
Sarajevo

After 'that assassination', the next time Sarajevo came to international notice was in 1984 when it hosted the Winter Olympics. The stadium where Torvill and Dean danced their Bolero is still there, but we did not visit it, we have seen ice rinks before and anyway my knowledge of and interest in ice-dancing are both vanishingly small.

Dinner at Kibe, Sarajevo

On the second evening we had dinner at Kibe, a restaurant high on the head of the valley overlooking the city. Despite the setting and the obvious upmarket décor it was not particular expensive, even by local standards. Again we started with šljivovica with cheese, freshly baked bread and olive oil. Lamb's liver with onions and veal with mushrooms in a sour cream sauce were both excellent, as was the Mostar Blatina we drank with it, a little lighter than the Vranac but full of character. Bosnian restaurants offer the full range of what we usually think of as Turkish sweets – and they are as good as they are in Turkey. We just had enough room left to share a portion of Kadayif.

Lamb's liver, veal with mushrooms and a bottle of Mostar Blatina

The Republica Srpska and the Start of the Seige of Sarajevo

In 1992, just over a year after Bosnia’s first multi-party elections, a referendum was held which led to the declaration of independence from Yugoslavia. In protest the Bosnian Serbs, who had largely boycotted the referendum, set about creating the Republika Srpska. They were initially aided by the rump of the Serb-dominated Yugoslavian National Army.

There were many Serb majority areas but creating a Bosnian Serb republic required the removal – or murder – of thousands of non-Serbian residents. The concept of ‘ethnic cleansing’ has existed since humans first formed themselves into tribes, but it was in Bosnia that the term was ‘popularised’. The main victims were undoubtedly the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and the main aggressors the Bosnian Serbs, but all three communities, Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks were, at different times, both the victims and the perpetrators of atrocities.

Being both the Bosnian capital and on the edge of the proposed Republika Srpska, Sarajevo became a focal point of the struggle. Serbian artillery and snipers occupied the hills that dominate the city and Sarajevo was to endure the longest siege in modern history.

I admit to having little understanding of the military mind – my instincts tend to be pacifist – but it is usually possible to discern the internal logic of a military campaign. I am, though, at a loss to understand the military justification for the siege of Sarajevo. When Bosnia declared independence it had no army and the hastily assembled militia were seriously under-equipped; the Serbs could have taken the city whenever they wanted. The well tried medieval tactic of starving out the defenders was abandoned when the Serbs ceded control of the airport to the UN. A constant stream of relief flights ensured that whatever dangers and privations the citizens of Sarajevo had to face, they might be hungry, but they would not starve. Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb commander now on trial in The Hague, was reported as saying: ‘Shoot at slow intervals until I order you to stop. Shell them until they can’t sleep; don’t stop until they are on the edge of madness.’ What a nice man. [Update: He was found guilt on 22/11/2017 of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and sentenced to life imprisonment].

Surrounded by enemy controlled hills the only way in or out of the city was across the airport. This route not only compromised UN neutrality but was also dangerous - the open ground being a shooting gallery for snipers.

Sarajevo under siege. For reasons known only to themselves the publishers of this map decided to put South at the top!

The Tunnel of Hope, Sarajevo

In January 1993 volunteers started digging a tunnel under the airport from the village of Butmir. The 960m long ‘Tunnel of Hope’ was completed in 6 months and allowed armaments and humanitarian aid to be carried into the city. It has been largely filled in, but the Butmir end is now a museum and that was where we headed on Tuesday morning.

We had planned to take the tram to the end of the line and then a taxi to Butmir. Unsure where to buy tram tickets we asked at the hotel and discovered there were no trams, or more exactly, no trams running the full length of the line. Sarajevo’s venerable tram system was undergoing major refurbishment.

It was suggested we took a bus to the Dobrinja district and then seek further directions. In true Hotel Ada fashion the girl from reception walked down to the old town with us, showed us the (unmarked) bus stop, and when the bus arrived instructed the driver to tell us where to get off and then give us directions.

Dobrinja is a post-war (WW2 that is) suburb at the mouth of the valley, built at right angles to the rest of the city. The road heads south from the main drag hugging the mountains from where Serb snipers could shoot into Dobrinja at will. The Lonely Planet describes the suburb as ‘dreary’ with ‘dismal ranks of bullet-scarred apartment blocks’. Dobrinja has been largely patched up, but the place was built dismal and all the patching up in the world is not going to change that. Just before we reached the border of the Republika Srpska the bus turned right into the estate. We stopped on a wide, though largely deserted, road among the apartment blocks and the driver turned and gestured to us. As we got off he pointed down the road ahead and then indicated a vague right, as though he was showing us the emergency exits on a plane. It was not the most helpful of directions, but what more could we have expected?

We were close to where the eastern end of the tunnel had been. The museum and the surviving part at the western end were only a kilometre away, but were on the far side of the airport. The hills may no longer be alive with snipers, but wandering across an international airport was still not a realistic option.

Fortunately we had been dropped off right beside the Dobrinja taxi rank. We woke the driver in the first car, said ‘tunnel’ in fluent Bosnian and he drove us round the airport, past the tram terminus and into the countryside, dropping us off outside a very ordinary, if bullet scarred, house beside a narrow lane.

The rather ordinary, if bullet scarred, house that stands over the entrance to the 'Tunnel of Hope', Butmir

There is little of the tunnel left, but anybody who is anybody - Morgan Freeman, Michael Palin and Paddy Ashdown to name but three - has paid a visit, as their photograph collection shows.

A brief film tells the story of the tunnel. Over a million people passed through it bringing 20 million tonnes of food into the city; there is even film of a man leading a goat through the tunnel. Armaments were brought in as well and eventually rails were laid to allow the movement of heavier equipment. Telephone lines reconnected Sarajevo with the outside world and a power cable supplied electricity.

Lynne inside the Tunnel of Hope, Sarajevo

There was other footage from the siege; people hiding from sniper fire, a car driving down a road and being narrowly missed by a mortar shell. All this happened so recently and to people who look like us, dress like us, drive cars down streets like we do that it feels very immediate and deeply shocking. Perhaps we are more used to victims looking different from us because such events happen far away or long ago. Intellectually I know it makes no difference, human beings are human beings, but my response to the pictures came from somewhere which did not involve intellect.

Novo Sarajevo, The War Museum and 'Snipers' Alley'

After we had walked through the remains of the tunnel, the museum owner phoned us a taxi. The cab took us back round the airport and down the same main road as on our arrival. We stopped in Novo Sarajevo, the area east of the Austro-Hungarian town, to visit the Sarajevo war museum.

The War Museum, Sarajevo

The museum is in a war damaged building deliberately left unrepaired. It tells the story of the siege in photographs and in the artefacts people cobbled together to make life possible. Six weeks earlier we had seen photographs of the worst that human beings can do to each other at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. The photographs of the siege involved different people with a different backdrop but the same horrors. 11,500 civilians – including 1500 children – died. Snipers and random shelling killed and maimed indiscriminately. Not a single building remained undamaged. Food was available, but fuel for cooking and heating during Sarajevo’s savage winters was hard to find. People smashed up their furniture, took off the doors of their rooms and went out into the city’s parks to chop down trees.

Makeshift wood burning stoves, Sarajevo War Museum

A photographer working for Colors magazine was shooting the wartime artefacts. I was pressed into service to hold the end of a makeshift shopping trolley. He said he would remove my hand from the photo later – so there goes my bid for fame.

I become the assistant to a real photographer, Sarajevo War Museum

The museum is opposite the Holiday Inn, which was the only functioning hotel in Sarajevo during the siege and the base for all the foreign correspondents. The road between the museum and the hotel, the main thoroughfare into the city, was the notorious 'Snipers' Alley'; to cross it was to invite death. It has six lanes and a tramway in the middle, hardly anybody’s idea of an ‘alley’, but few journalists would let the truth spoil a memorable phrase.

The Holiday Inn across 'Sniper's Alley', Sarajevo

We dropped into the Holiday Inn, partly out of curiosity, partly in search of an ATM. It was basic and battle scarred during the war but is now a luxury hotel again. It has, though, always been this gruesome colour midway between custard and hepatitis; apparently people had choices and someone chose this!

Behind the Holiday Inn are Sarajevo’s twin towers. Much smaller than New York’s, they were set ablaze by artillery fire. They were burnt out shells for many years after the war but have now been rebuilt exactly as they once were.

Sarajevo's twin towers

We walked in the drizzle from Novo Sarajevo past the Alipašina Mosque, built in 1561……

The Alipašina Mosque, Sarajevo

….and into the Austro-Hungarian quarter.

The Markale, Sarajevo

The Markale is Sarajevo’s main food market. It is not one of the world’s great markets, but with strawberries at 3 Marks (£1.20) a kilo – and excellent strawberries they were too – a little dowdiness can be forgiven. On the 5th of February 1994 a mortar attack on the crowded market killed 68 and wounded 144. The siege had slipped from the front pages of the world’s newspapers but the massacre put it right back. International outrage was, however, not sufficient to stop it happening again. In August 1995 five more mortar shells hit the market killing 37 people.

The Markale, Sarajevo

The second massacre brought an immediate military response from NATO. After Belgrade was bombed the Serbs forced their Bosnian cousins to the negotiating table and the resulting Dayton Accord, signed in December 1995, ended the Bosnian War.

The Markale, Sarajevo

The Accord acknowledged the existence of two ‘entities’ within Bosnia-Herzegovina – the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska. With many of its former leaders on trial in The Hague, the Republika Srpska has followed a more moderate path. There are no longer check points between the two entities, they now have the same currency and a unified army. All of which makes Bosnia more normal and blurs the distinction the war was fought to create. So why was it fought in the first place?

The Vratnic Citadel and the Grave of Alia Izetbegović

On our last evening we walked up to the wall round the Vratnic Citadel. The two restored towers are now a museum to the memory of Alia Izetbegović, independent Bosnia’s first president, war leader and afterwards Bosniak representative in the tripartite presidency. He died of heart disease in 2003. Unlike some of the Serbian leaders, Izetbegović was not a war criminal but I find it hard to believe he was as saintly as the museum makes out. Few (if any) national leaders are without faults and attempts to present them as such make me uncomfortable.

Restored tower on the Vratnic Citadel, Sarajevo

Alia Izetbegović is buried in the vast Muslim war cemetery below the citadel. After his death there were suggestions that the airport should be renamed in his honour. The Serbs objected and Paddy Ashdown, the international High Representative, decided the move would be divisive, so the airport remains plain Sarajevo International.

The grave of Alia Izetbegović, Kovači Martyr’s Cemetery, Sarajevo

On Wednesday morning we left Sarajevo for Mostar. The destination boards in the bus station - Banja Luka, Tuzla, Goražde, Srebrenica - were a roll call of 1990s headlines.

For most of its 550 years Sarajevo pottered along as the small, quiet capital of an obscure province of a distant empire. Twice, though, in the 20th century it became the focus of international attention, and the second time brought the city close to annihilation. It is now well into the process of recovery and there is no sign that any side wants to reopen the old wounds. It is a small, cosy city as capitals go, with a beautiful setting. The setting though is a curse as well as a blessing; it brought the Winter Olympics and it also brought the siege. What Sarajevo needs now is a prolonged period of peace and growing prosperity, and there are grounds to be optimistic that it is getting exactly that.

Sarajevo (1), The Old Town, The New Town and the Assassination of Franz Ferdinand: Part 1 of The Balkans

Ottoman Sarajevo, Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo, and the Spark that Ignited the First World War

First Impressions

Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sarajevo

The sun was shining as we left the terminal at Sarajevo’s small airport and found our way to the taxi rank for the ritual ripping off of the new arrival. ‘Fixed fare to the Old Town,’ the driver said when I naively suggested he might switch on his meter. 30 Marks (£12) may or may not have been the correct fare but it was, we would discover, expensive compared with other local taxi rides.

Sarajevo lies along a narrow valley with mountains surrounding it on three sides and the airport on the fourth. The drive to our hotel, a hundred metres uphill from the Old Town, took us the length of the long thin city as we journeyed back in time from the modern airport, through the 1960s' apartment blocks – some of outstanding ugliness - through the turn of the last century Austro-Hungarian administrative area and round the pedestrianised Ottoman heart of the Old Town. Sixteen years had passed since the end of the longest siege in modern military history (April 1992- Feb 1996) but buidlings in every district were pock marked with bullet holes, while some bore the scars of more serious damage.

War damaged buildings, Austro-Hungarian quarter, Sarajevo

Two Millenia of History in 150 Words

The earliest Balkan civilization was Hellenic, the area being known as Illyria from the 8th century BC. The Romans duly took over and when their empire fractured the region was absorbed into the Byzantine Empire. In the 6th century AD Slavic tribes started to arrive. Bosnia emerged as an independent kingdom as the Byzantine Empire disintegrated and from about 1180 to the mid-15th century it was a power of some importance.

The expanding Ottoman Empire swallowed Bosnia in the 1460s, and that was the end of independence (until 1991). Sarajevo was founded in 1461 as the administrative capital for the new Ottoman province. When the Ottoman Empire declined, Bosnia became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and when that fell in 1918, it joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes - later Yugoslavia.

Ottoman Sarajevo

The Ada Hotel, Sarajevo Old Town

We checked into the tiny but excellent Hotel Ada and, after complimentary tea and cakes, took the short walk into the Old Town. Baščaršija Square, known as pigeon square for obvious reasons, is surrounded by cafés. The centrepiece, the Sebilj, looks Ottoman but is actually a drinking fountain erected by the Austrians in 1891.

By the Sebilj, Baščaršija Square, Sarajevo

Narrow alleys lead off the square, each devoted to a single craft.

Metalworkers Street off Baščaršija Square, Sarajevo

The Gazi Husrev-beg Buildings

Not far away are the Gazi Husrev-beg buildings, constructed in 1530 by the Ottoman governor of that name. There is a madrassa, an imposing mosque….

The doorway of the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque,Sarajevo

…a covered bazaar, which still houses stalls selling linen and second hand books…..

Gazi Husrev-beg Covered Bazaar, Sarajevo

…. and, unusually for a mosque, a clock tower which could be Italian but for the Arabic numerals on the clock face.

The Gazi Husrev-beg clock tower, Sarajevo

The Old Orthodox Church

Gazi-Husrevby may be the oldest but it is certainly not the only mosque in the Old Town. In fact it is a surprise to find a church in such essentially Turkish surroundings. The Church of the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel, usually called the Old Orthodox Church, is a 1740 rebuild of a medieval original. Although austere on the outside, the inside is anything but. The church is wider than it is long so has room for a huge iconostasis which is jewel encrusted and festooned with icons. There was also a relic of Saint Thecla and an icon in a glass case that all the other visitors when we were there thought it necessary to kiss.

Orthodox Church, Old Town, Sarajevo

The Yellow Bastion, the Victims of the Siege and the Origin of the Bozniaks

One evening we walked further up the hill behind our hotel. In 1697 the Austrians rampaged across the Ottoman Empire, trashing Sarajevo as they went. In response the Ottomans built the Vratnik citadel, enclosing 50,000 m² at the head of the valley. Part of the wall has recently been rebuilt, but we left that for later and continued to the Yellow Bastion, a crumbling grass-covered stone structure giving magnificent views over the city.

I intended this narrative to follow the history of the city rather than the random wanderings of our visit, but the past is not so orderly. In the foreground of every photograph taken from the Yellow Bastion is a massive Muslim cemetery containing the graves of eleven hundred victims of the siege of Sarajevo, 1991-95.

Sarajevo from the Yellow Bastion

All across the city pencil-slim minarets pointed to the heavens. As dusk fell we heard multiple calls to prayer; the familiar clipped Arabic syllables sung to notes more than usually attuned to the European ear.

When the Ottomans arrived the people of Bosnia were overwhelmingly Christian; Catholic Croats who used the Roman alphabet, and Orthodox Serbs who spoke the same language, but wrote it in Cyrillic, though the orthographic distinction was of small interest to the largely illiterate peasantry. Under Ottoman rule there were distinct advantages in being Muslim and gradually, beginning with the administrative classes, Bosnians started to convert. Eventually there were three distinct communities in Bosnia; Muslim Bosniaks (now 48% of the Bosnian population), Orthodox Serbs (37%) and Catholic Croats (14%).

Dinner Under the Lindens

The first night, we dined at Pod Lipom (Under the Lindens) a restaurant in the Old Town. Observing the other diners, we started with a glass of šljivovica, the fiery plum brandy popular all over the Balkans, accompanied by plate of full flavoured local cheeses. For the main course we chose a mix of local specialities; Bosnian cooks like stuffing vegetables – onions, peppers, vine leaves - with minced beef and covering them with a sauce based on sour cream. A bottle of Montenegrin Vranac, a dark wine with a powerful smoky nose, but lighter palate, was a fine accompaniment. After starting with brandy and cheese we could have eaten our entire meal backwards by finishing with soup, but only in Hanoi have we ever encountered a ‘dessert soup’, and anyway we were too stuffed even for a slice of baklava.

The next two days were drizzly and cool. At home we would have been basking in a late spring heat wave; meteorologically we were definitely in the wrong country.

Bjelava and the Srvzo House

After an hour in the Old Town on Wednesday morning we returned to our hotel for more and drier clothing. In typical Hotel Ada style, no sooner had we reached our room than the proprietor appeared at the door with a tray of tea. Refreshed and more appropriately clad we walked through the rain to the Bjelava district which sits on the lower slopes of the mountain immediately north of the Old Town. It is a mixed residential area with apartment blocks and new brick houses among some old Turkish style dwellings.

The Bjelava district in the rain

The Svrzo House (vowels sometimes seem an optional extra in the Balkans) is the oldest house in Bjelava and, according to the Lonely Planet, ‘the best preserved Ottoman-era courtyard townhouse anywhere in the Balkans.’ With an inner and outer house, wooden balconies, a fully furnished dining room with traditional bench seats.....

Ottoman style dining room, Svrzo House, Bjelava, Sarajevo

.....bedrooms..........

Bedroom, Svrzo House, Bjelava, Sarajevo

...bathrooms and kitchens it gave an insight into the very Eastern lifestyle of the well-off in the Ottoman era

We made our way back down to the old town down streets which sometimes turned into stairs.

Down to the old town on streets that sometimes turn into stairs, Sarajevo

Finding a Beer and a Sandwich

We were heading for a café we had earmarked earlier. Lunch, we had learned on Tuesday, can be a problem in Sarajevo. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of cafés, but coffee is all they sell, with maybe a cake or an ice cream. There are doner kebab stalls – which are every bit as appetising on their home turf as they are in England – and Čevabdžinica, cheap eateries whose specialities, which include ćevapi (grilled cylinders of minced beef) and burek (much the same but encased in filo pastry) are a touch heavy for a light lunch - and they only serve soft drinks. There are bars for those who just want alcohol, but finding the equivalent of a beer and a sandwich required perseverance.

We had spotted a suitable place for lunch an hour or two earlier, before the rainstorm that drove us to change our clothing. Nearby, we had sipped coffee sitting on the carpet covered bench seats outside a typical Ottoman coffee shop on the boundary of the old and the Austro-Hungarian towns. We looked east…..

Looking right into Ottoman Sarajevo

Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo

….and then looked west, both actually and figuratively.

Looking left into Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo

Immediately after I had taken this photograph the light drizzle turned into steady rain, which was good news for the umbrella salesman (bottom left) if for no one else.

The Ottoman Empire frayed at the edges long before it crumbled at the heart. Rioting by starving Bosnians peasants after a disastrous harvest in 1875, sparked off a series of revolts across the Balkans. Three years later the Congress of Berlin invited the Austro-Hungarians to occupy Bosnia to calm the situation; occupation was followed by annexation in 1908.

Many Muslims emigrated to Turkey; those left behind started, for the first time, to develop a Bosniak identity. Sarajevo had quietly prospered under the Ottomans and did as well under the Austro-Hungarians. The city acquired a selection of solid and imposing buildings as the new rulers set out to make the city a modern European capital. Sarajevo had electric street lighting before Vienna (better to test such dangerous new technology in a remote part of the empire) and the first electric tramway in Europe (and the second in the world, after San Francisco).

Two Cathedrals and a Synagogue

Central European neo-Classical Sarajevo remains a city at the juncture of three cultures; it still has mosques, but also churches, including an Orthodox Cathedral…..

The Orthodox Cathedral, Sarajevo

.…and a Catholic Cathedral….

The Catholic Cathedral, Sarajevo

…..and even a pair of synagogues.

The Ashkenazy Synagogue, Sarajevo

And let us not forget the brewery, whose products we enjoyed several times.

Trg Oslobodenja (Liberation Square) has a peace monument, which is in poor repair (fortunately the same cannot be said of the peace) and a giant chess board. Whenever we passed there was always a small crowd watching – and advising - the players.

Playing Chess, Trg Oslobodenja, Sarajevo

The River Miljacka and the Despića House

The River Miljacka, which flows through the whole length of Sarajevo, may be small but frequent, often devastating, floods led to it being canalised in 1891. Consequently the buildings along its banks are entirely Austrian.

Beside the river Miljacka

The riverside Despića House was owned by a wealthy merchant family who also formed Sarajevo’s first theatre company. The ground floor dining room could have been in the Svrzo House - bar the paintings on the walls - but the upstairs salon is pure 19th century Viennese. The room across the landing, decorated with icons, was more eastern orthodox.

Viennese salon, the Despića House, Sarajevo

Understanding the politics and tensions that led to the Balkan Wars of the early 20th century is beyond the scope (and ability) of this blog. However the events of the 29th of June 1914 that thrust Sarajevo into the world headlines for the first, though sadly not last, time in the 20th century are easier to explain- though not to understand - and happened only 50m from the Despića’s front door.

The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, 1914

Nationalist factions in independent Serbia hoped to shake Bosnia free from the Austro-Hungarian empire and incorporate it into a greater Serbia – much the same ambitions caused the 1991-5 war. To this end they planned to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, while he was on a well-publicised visit to Sarajevo.

The plot involved the deployment of six potential assassins along the route of the Archduke’s motorcade from the station to the town hall. The first two failed to act, the third threw a bomb which bounced off Franz Ferdinand’s car and exploded under the following vehicle injuring 20. The failed assassin attempted to kill himself by taking a cyanide pill and jumping into the River Miljacka, but the cyanide pill only induced vomiting and jumping into the Miljacka is more likely to break an ankle than cause drowning.

The Miljacka - in places as much as 10 cm deep!

After the attack the motorcade proceeded at high speed and the remaining assassins, including Gavrilo Princip, were unable to act.

The Royal party lunched at the Town Hall, which later became the National Library and was destroyed during the siege. It is currently being rebuilt and from what we could see through the scaffolding, was once a great building and will be again.

Me and the largely rebuilt National Library and former Town Hall, Sarajevo

Abandoning the planned programme, the Royal Party set off towards the hospital to comfort those injured in the morning’s bomb attack. General Potiorek, in charge of security, decided the royal car would be safer to follow the river all the way rather than go through the city centre. Unfortunately, he forgot to tell the driver.

By the Latin Bridge the driver turned into Franz Josef Street. General Potiorek, who was travelling on the car’s running board, stopped him, ordering him to reverse. The driver stalled the engine and locked the gears.

The Latin Bridge with turning into Franz Josef Street next to the museum

Believing his chance had gone, Princip went into a bakery on the corner of Franz Josef Street - the building that is now a museum. He came out to find Franz Ferdinand right in front of him in a stationary car. He fired two shots, killing Franz Ferdinand and his wife the Duchess Sophie, though he later said he intended to kill Genreral Potiorek , not the duchess. He was not a good shot as he next attempted to shoot himself and missed.

There used to be footprints on the pavement marking the point where Princip had stood. That seemed a little frivolous after the siege so they were removed and the point is now marked only by a plaque.

The plaque on the wall of the museum

Inside, The museum tells the full story of the assassination and also has Princip’s gun.

The lower gun is the one used in the assassination

The conspirators were arrested and tried. Some were hanged but several, including Princip, were minors so were sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment.

Baldrick was bemused as to how the murder of an ostrich called Archy Duke in a place he had never heard of could have started a World War. It remains a good question. A month to the day after the assassination Austria declared war on Serbia, the next day Russia mobilised, followed by Germany on the 30th of July and France on the 1st of August. On the 4th Great Britain declared war on Germany. Princip could scarcely have imagined the far reaching consequences of his actions. The whole of Europe, it seems, was spoiling for a fight and perhaps if Princip had not provided the spark, another excuse would have been found. Whether or not he was truly responsible, Gavrilo Princip did not live to see the end of it. He died in prison from tuberculosis in 1916.

Despite Princip’s efforts many Bosnians fought for Austria-Hungary in the war. When it ended Bosnia joined the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, soon renamed Yugoslavia.

Sarajevo and World War II

Bosnian involvement in World War II started when the axis powers invaded the Balkan Peninsula in 1941. Temporarily absorbed into the puppet Croatian fascist state, the city of Sarajevo avoided most of the horrors of the war though Bosnia saw its share of fighting in a three cornered war between fascists, communist partisans and Yugoslav monarchists. The defeat of fascism, and those who died defeating it, are commemorated by an eternal flame outside the Finance Ministry (is it just me, or is that an odd juxtaposition?) We missed it when we walked past on Tuesday (could the ‘Eternal’ Flame have gone out?), but passed it again on Wednesday when we took this photo.

The eternal Flame outside the Finance Ministry

After World War II, Sarajevo carried on quietly as the capital of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Marshall Tito’s Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. A friend who visited in the 1970s was impressed by a multicultural city where everybody seemed to get on so well with everyone else. We know now there were tensions below the surface, but no one would have predicted the horror that was to come.

The Balkans
Bosnia and Herzogivina (May 2012)

Saturday 12 May 2012

Biddulph, The Cloud and Rushton Spencer: Cowpat Walk No. 4

A Circular Walk Around Staffordshire's North East Corner

Staffordshire
Staffordshire Moorlands

With just Francis, Mike and myself available, Cowpat 4 would hardly have been quorate if Francis had not previously walked it with Alison. That walk, on Easter Monday, was in rain and mist, this one was largely in sunshine, but sunshine with very little warmth.

Biddulph Grange Country Park to the Staffordshire Way

We arrived at Biddulph Country Park a little after 9. The sign on the car park gate said it would be unlocked at 7am, the padlock suggested this might not be entirely true. I parked on the road outside.

The gates to the car park were firmly locked

We strolled north up the minor road, turning left where the attractive Mill House sits behind its large pond.

Francis passes Mill House

Ignoring the belligerent goose we turned down what was once, presumably, the mill race. We should have been in the field above, but it was a very pretty path down a steep dingle lined with bluebells.

It may have been pretty, but the path was also muddy, slippery and, occasionally, steep. With my camera in one hand and sunglasses in the other, I descended a particularly precipitous section which seemed to offer four natural steps. The lowest looked like a stone, but had the properties of ice and promptly dumped me in the mud on my backside. My initial attempt at standing was abandoned when I discovered my left hand was lodged on a thistle, but eventually I made it and continued down the path.

A pretty path down a steep dingle...

100m further on I realised I no longer had my sunglasses. I am quite attached to them - they are ‘genuine’ Ray-bans and cost me 120,000 Dong (see Ray-bans in Heathrow and Saigon) – so I retraced my steps. I could not find them at first but after re-climbing the ‘natural steps’ I spotted them in the mud at the bottom. Descending, I again slipped on the bottom step and again crashed onto my arse. This time I avoided the thistle, picked up my glasses and then myself and walked on, bloodied but unbowed. My glasses, on the other hand, were muddied and a little bowed, but I soon straightened them up.

A muddy and slippery path beside the mill race

We climbed the bank onto the correct field path which gave us a view of the remains of Biddulph Old Hall.

Biddulph Old Hall hides in the trees

Descending to the A527, we crossed it and climbed the steps onto the disused railway that runs north from Kidsgrove.

Down to the A527

Following the Staffordshire Way to The Summit of the Cloud

From here to Rushton Spencer we would be on the Staffordshire Way. We walked the entire 93 miles of the Staffordshire Way in 2005/6, and one day, when I have nothing more pressing to blog about, I will post some photos. [That day came during the second Covid lockdown March/April 2021. I posted a 7-part blog of the walk, which starts here.]

Along the disused railway

After a kilometre on the railway, despite being on the Staffordshire Way, we entered Cheshire. The disused railway is not very interesting, but it is flat and has a good surface for walking, so it was another quick kilometre before we turned off towards The Cloud.

Field paths to The Cloud

We approached the hill across field paths and through the Timbersbrook picnic site – devoid of picnickers in the May chill. The ascent starts through a wood on a path with a lot of high steps. This emerges onto a more gently graded bridleway, which we followed briefly before turning up a steeper path with some fine views over the Cheshire Plain, the giant telescope of Jodrell Bank right in the middle of it.

Leaving the bridle way for a steeper path, The Cloud

Continuing with a more gentle climb through Cloud plantation….

Through Cloud Plantation

…we emerged onto the heather covered back of The Cloud’s gritstone cap.

The heather covered gritstone cap, The Cloud

At 343m The Cloud is hardly one of the world’s great mountains, are even a mountain at all, but it does provide some fine views over Rudyard Lake to the south west, the Dane Valley to the west and the Cheshire Plain to the north.

Looking west over the valley of the River Dane

It also has a spot where you can get out of the breeze and drink your coffee.

Coffee stop on The Cloud

The first time I climbed The Cloud, some 15 years ago, I was on my own and I had the whole hill to myself. That same day, 50 people reached the summit of Mount Everest. Sometimes you do not have to go as far as you think to avoid the crowds.

From The Cloud to Rushton Spencer

The Cheshire/Staffordshire boundary runs across the summit of The Cloud. We descended into Staffordshire over field paths, sometimes straight down the field, ….

Descending The Cloud: Straight down a field

…and sometimes across them, offering plenty of opportunities to turn an ankle…

Descending The Cloud: Across a field

… but also some views back to The Cloud.

Looking back at The Cloud

Eventually the path drops into the deep ravine of Ravenscloud Brook, another pretty path among bluebells, but less muddy and slippery.

Bluebells by Ravenscloud Brook

I heard a bird which I took to be a buzzard, but Mike clearly saw an owl sail overhead. By the time Francis and I looked up it had settled in a tree and disappeared.

Mike looks for his owl by Ravenscloud Brook

The brook meets the River Dane, which we followed briefly before joining the second disused railway of the morning….

Approaching our second disused railway of the morning

…though this one was not so pleasant underfoot.

A stonier disused railway

Lunch at The Knot, Rushton Spencer

We soon reached the Knot Inn in Rushton Spencer where a couple of pints of Timothy Taylor’s ‘Landlord’ washed down my excellent turkey and leek pie. The ‘Landlord’ ran out so Mike and Francis had to switch to Adnam’s ‘Broadside’ - no great hardship.

The Knot Inn, Rushton Spencer

From Rushton Spencer back to Biddulph

After lunch we continued a few hundred metres down the railway then forsook the Staffordshire Way and turned west, back towards Biddulph.

After spending the morning climbing to 343m and then descending right down to 159m, the afternoon involved climbing back up to 322m; no wonder my legs were sore the next day.

A short ascent west of Rushton Spencer, was followed by a brief descent and then another climb up to what is described on the map as a ‘cross’, but is actually a large graveyard, still in use, beside what looks like an isolated chapel.

St Lawrence, Rushton Spencer

The 'Chapel in the Wilderness', as it was once called is a medieval wood-frame building rebuilt in sandstone in the 18th century. Until the 19th century Rushton Spencer and surrounding villages formed the 'chapelry of Rushton', the parish church being 5 miles away in Leek. In 1865 it became a parish in its own right and the Chapel in the Wilderness became Ruston Spencer's Parish Church of St Lawrence.

As a parish church it was much closer than Leek,  but it is still far enough away to give a good view back over Rushton Spencer to the hills on the western edge of the Peak District which will feature in Cowpat 5 (Shutlingsloe and Danebridge).

Looking back over Rushton Spencer

We climbed up to Beat Lane, crossed it and then headed down Dingle Lane, the irritating sharp drop to cross Dingle Brook merely increasing the forthcoming climb.

Unlike The Cloud, the grassy bank now separating us from Biddulph had no summit and no pretension about being a mountain; it did not even have a name though the top is only 20m lower than The Cloud. A hard slog through the long grass of the lower slope brought us onto a plateau, after which a slight turn westwards started the second part of the ascent. Trudging upwards without looking at the map I got it into my head that Oxhay Farm was the top of the hill. When we passed the farm buildings I was less than delighted to discover they had been hiding a further 50 m of climbing.

Through the long grass of the lower slopes

Once at the top, we followed the minor road along the ridge for a few hundred metres before again turning west with the knowledge that it was all downhill from here.

Mike negotiates a thin style near Oxhay Farm

Some of the field paths were very wet, others were churned by cattle and some were both, but generally it was fairly easy going. At one farm we followed the diverted path around the buildings, crossing the drive just as the owner drove down it in his Ferrari. We probably stared a little - the upland farmer’s usual vehicle of choice is a battered Land Rover.

The driver stopped and politely enquired if we knew where we were and where we were going. We assured him we did. He may have been concerned for our welfare, but more likely he was checking that we were what we seemed to be (and indeed we were) and not thieves intent on sharing his undoubted wealth. Reassured, he drove off. The Ferrari swiftly disappeared from view, but lingered rather longer on the ear.

Further down, we passed the rocky outcrop by Troughstone Farm and Francis chose exactly the right moment to turn left, though the crossing path was unmarked. Earlier he had protested that accurate navigating and Adnam’s Broadside do not mix - he had underrated himself.

Rocky outcrop above Troughstone Farm

We continued working our way downwards via a minor road and more field paths until eventually a muddy sunken lane brought us out on another minor road. A final field path brought us back to the road up to Biddulph Country Park.

A muddy sunken lane

By now the gates had been unlocked and the car park was three quarters full. My car looked lonely and out of place on the road outside.

Approx distance: 18 km