Concerns riding Off Road in Croatia and Bosnia
 

Hi All,

I am a new rider, well I don't ride the motorbike but enjoy the ride on the back :thumbup1:, this may seem like a silly question but I have done my research and read a lot of articles etc.

I have concerns riding off road in Croatia and Bosnia due to the landmines that are still active. There are maps that show, there a still quite a lot of these around and they are not just located around the dispute lines of the border but located all over the two countries.

I have also heard of recent incidents that have occured from tourist that have ridden or walked through the tracks and :oops2: something bad happens.

Has anyone had any problems with the off road biking and is there special roads that are made for the off-road biking in these two countries....just would be nice to also see the scenery and not be so parniod about the landmines.

I know silly but still feeling uneasy.

I did some push bike touring in the Balkans and was pretty concerned. I don't think it really is an issue with the riding but more wild camping if that is your thing.

My advice is think "has someone been along here in the last 15 years". If you can see a track then it should be safe. Just be careful about stepping off the track for a piss, photo or pitching a tent. The other advice is talk to the locals, they know what's up.

Thanks for that. I am very concerned as we were thinking of wild camping but I think we may just skip that and stay in accommodation :) .... What did you do for rest? Did you stay in accommodation or camp in special camping sites?

The rule of thumb, nearly 20 years ago, was "don't step off any hard surface, ever" unless you are absolutely sure that the land has been cleared of UXO (there is probably far more than deliberately placed mines in those countries; I have no idea how much of that stuff has been cleared).

Thank you for your response I don’t think I will be wild camping now ... its apparently illegal in Croatia. Not surprised though, there was said somewhere the mine situation would not be completed cleared until 2015 or so
:oops2:

I don't really see the point of wild camping in general but especially not in Croatia, there are plenty of small "official" sites that cost pence. In Bosnia there are plenty of cheap hotels, I was there a couple of years ago and only paid £34 for a double room, half board, in a decent hotel in the tourist trap of Mostar.

Wild camping can be great.... Guaranteed alone time if you do it properly.

I was looking into the mines out there too. There are A LOT and they're not even close to clearing them all. Some will NEVER be found. It will be like France/Belgium where farmers are still digging up mines 70 years on.

I'd rely on local knowledge. Tot other travellers who could be speculating. No matter how good their intentions. I'd be skipping on the wild camping out there if it were me. Unless it was guaranteed cleared.

When I was camping in Albania I usually pitched my tent were the sheep were. I figure out that if there were some mines, than sheep had already cleared them...

Sent from my GT-I9100G

Thank you for your response. Is there a list of countries that have a mine problems that I can view

I have done quite a bit of resaerch and I was not aware of mines in Albania, where I will also be visiting.

I spent some time on foot in a heavily mined area of Mozambique right after the end of their civil war. What impressed me most was the fine line between what was known to be ok and what was not: there'd be a narrow path on which everyone walked, but stepping even a half-meter from the edge of the path was totally unsafe. In villages there were fields where crops were being grown just inches from identical fields which had maimed children. The locals knew, but I sure didn't.

I also remember seeing "minas" warning signs in some very unlikely places near the Chile/Argentina border. It turned out that mines had been sown in the passes, then carried long distances by flash floods and deposited unpredictably. Just because an area was never mined, or used to be safe, or had sheep grazing it last year, doesn't mean there aren't mines there currently.

For me, under any similar circumstances, that would render wild camping out of the question.

Mark

Edited to not cause confusion with the later..more indepth post.

I did wild camp, but chose places carefully. I'd say it's easier on a pushbike as you are going at a pace that you can evaluate spots for camping without slowing your pace much. A couple times it was simply at the corner of a field, or a section of road that has since be rerouted (say by an old bridge next to where a modern bridge has been since built)

edit: I didn't venture offroad in these areas for a few reasons, one being the landmines. They could have fewer places that are able to be deemed safe.

All the stuff from work is restricted and is not allowed to be reproduced....so, I have done some basic research and knocked up a slightly better format.

Common sense rules.

1) Absolutely Avoid the following areas.

A) Vacated/abandoned buildings and the surrounding grounds.

B) Private property,woods or orchards.

C) Unattended fields/heavy vegetation

D) ### Military areas or known conflict zones, or battlefield debris###

E) Cordoned off, fenced off areas.

F) Advised or warned by locals.

2) Travel only on road, or recognised hard surfaced track.

3) Do not pick up or disturb unkown or suspicious items.

4) Do Not interfere with any kind of label or marking....legally, this is the same activity as if you were laying a minefield yourself.

Marking of Minefields.

If the area is being actively de-mined then it " should " be marked up in an obvious and recognised manner, cleared zones will again be marked up and normally a date and an information plate of the clearence will be nearby.

Outside of an offical de-mining site, anything and everything can be used.

A local warning of a suspected or actual mine can be something as simple as a circle of stones placed around the suspect device, or a triangulation of sticks nearby...a few pieces of coloured cloth or a local mine warning plate. You do not really want to be in an area that these are being used.

A few examples of mine signs...official and local.

Depending on what part of Bosnia or Croatia you go will obviously depend on how near to the conflict zones you will be.

Unfortunately there was not really a so called frontline as such, as during the conflict it was not unknown to find the four main factions all fighting each other in one town/valley and then find 2 factions allied with each other fighting the other two.This caused a great confusion in how to keep track of the battlelines and drove our cartography people absolutely crackers when sending out the weekly updated maps showing the main conflict zones.

Result being, there were battles and skirmishes all over the place, often unrecorded.

You also had the criminal element....effectively bandits who had their own agenda, and had access to military hardware..including mines..doing their own thing.

If you go off exploring, you will quite easily find the remains of old bunkers and trench systems, destroyed military equipment and demolished houses.......AVOID EXPLORING THESE as mentioned earlier.

Mines

Background

Almost the entire arsenal of mines used in the war ( of all factions ) was from the Yugoslavian army stockpiles....which was huge, and while a few of the mines designs were home grown, the bulk of the mines were either Soviet or exact copies/licensed maufactured from Soviet mines.

However, quite a few modern mines were being used...made in Italy mostly.

This mean's that a great many of the mines used were made of plastic in their entirety of had the min amount of metal required by international law ( for detection purposes )...the metal content was easily removeable though....being a metal band or clip in the case of the ones from Italy.

On a practical level this means that the mines used were an utter sod to detect, and are still causing massive problems now for that reason. They were also thought at the time to be quite resistant to corrosion, however their pressure plates and other parts rotted quicker than the casing, making them quite fragile anyway. A lot of Soviet mines, especially the anti-personel stuff could stay active for a very long time.....Some western designs were meant to deativate after a certain time period.

AP or Anti-Personel

These are the smaller mines, that can range from a charge designed to take off a foot to a far larger charge, designed to take out a section of soldiers. Due to their size and simplicity these mines can be all over the place, and it was a known tactic for hundreds of them to be just sown at random around a fighting position and just left there when the troops moved out.

Quite nasty and (I would imagine very unstable now... if still in one piece ) quite a threat in woodland. One type was in a form of a grenade with a hollow core that you placed onto a wooden state that was hammered into the grenade ( minus the mine at this point ) that was triggered by tripwire. 20 years of rot on that wooden state is not a good thing.

Other types were cannisters that were anchored to the ground by a chain, and when triggered by either wire or one of their exposed prongs being tilted....shot up into the air on a small charge, and when reaching the endof the chain ( about 1 to 1.5 metre ) exploded.

Due to their size, I would guess a lot of these will have degraded beyond use or would have detonated by various means by now.

AT or Anti-Tank mines

Big mines that most people would being able to guess at what a mine looks like, normally round or square in shape, holding approx 8 kg of high explosive.

Yugoslav mines had a feature that made them stackable..basically you could have a stack of mines buried into the floor that would be a case of severe overkill. 10 x AT mines..over 80kg of HE.They also had a built in feature that meant you could effectively boobytrap them against demining.

A rather common tactic was to also place them inside buildings, under door flagstones and to hang them up in trees to explode down on the target.

These are the mines that often survive the longest due to their bulk and sturdiness....( they are still a threat in the deserts of Africa where WWII battles were fought ). They are big enough to be washed away in floods and landslides, and survive being thrown around by another detonation...simply put, they can move beyond their original area.

Their pressure plates or tilt fuzes ( Stalk pointing up that detonates when something tilts it ) get very sensitive with age, and where a 250kg pressure might have been needed to detonate when manufactured, it will be much less now.

Just some bits of information if you want to delve into it.

An App for your phone, with mine information on it.

How your phone could save your life: Army bomb disposal expert creates app to help spot landmines | Mail Online

Landmine awareness by Eigo is the name in the itune store..

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id51...mber_121445248


The Croation Mine centre ( HCR ) is a very good resource, if you are taking the threat seriously.

" Current status of mine suspected areas in the Republic of Croatia amounts to 830 km2 and it is a result of humanitarian demining and general survey operations. Mine suspected area (MSA) covers 12 counties i.e. 100 towns and municipalities contaminated with mines and unexploded ordinances. It is assumed that the MSA is contaminated with 90 000 mines. Mine suspected area is also contaminated with large number of unexploded ordinances, especially in the areas of combat operations during the Homeland war. In line with the Law on Humanitarian Demining, the MSA is categorized into areas for mine search and demining. 25% of the MSA is scheduled for demining and 75% for mine search operations The entire MSA on the territory of the Republic of Croatia is marked with 16.000 mine warning signs "

Croation Mine Centre..... CROMAC - Croatian mine action centre

Bosnia

BH MAC Bosnian Mine Centre, BH MAC : News

" Bosnia and Herzegovina is still on of the most mine contaminated countries in the South Eastern Europe region.

Total supect area currently covers around 1.274,20 km2 or 2,5% of total country size
9.958 - defined microlocations
200,000 - mines and EODs still to be found
19,182 minefields recorded.
4119 - mine action projects still to be implemented "

Bosnia saw the bulk of the fighting and the conflict lasted a substantial time longer in Bosnia than Croatia.


This is starting to go into the technical and strategic realms, but a interesting read if you are into this stuff.

Landmine and Cluster Munition Moniter. Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor

Do not get too overwhelmed by all this info....the basic common sense rules are enough for anyone.

Thank you all so much, there information is definitley great.

I was in Bosnia 3 weeks ago and asked about this cos I was there for hiking.

They said pretty much the same as ^^

-ask the locals, buy a coffee, only about 80c and say where you are thinking of going..everyone I talked to was helpful/friendly although they didn't all speak english
-the known mined areas are mostly well signposted
-they said the national park was ok and there are cattle grazing up high in summer so i figured safe.
-lower down there are a lot of marked tracks which are ok
-camping (and rooms) are cheap, I guy who runs a restaurant/bar let me camp in his garden for free for 2 nights
-there are camping areas in the national park but (they said) wild camping was not legal unless you were 'too tired to continue'