Purišića vir – a hidden gem of the Dalmatian hinterland

We come across some interesting locations purely by chance, and the information that reaches us tends to be very sparse and often unverified. This is the story of one such location.

All we had to go on was that someone had gone swimming at some gorgeous little lake somewhere in the area around Muć. The little lake sits on a stream near some ruined watermills. The Muć area is fairly large, and there are streams everywhere, both in the fields and up in the hills. After a brief search of the map, we failed to find anything that might hint at the location of the lake, so we gave up on searching further — but the story stayed somewhere in the back of our minds.

After some time, I happened to stumble upon a mention of Purišića vir. The moment I heard of Muć and saw the photos, I remembered that first story. As for new information, the text only mentioned that you should leave the car by the church, cross the bridge, and that it is then no more than ten minutes or so to get there. Once again, a search of the map followed. We examined all the churches and potential streams in the vicinity, but again without any concrete conclusion. Once, passing through Muć, we took a look around the churches, but we couldn’t work out where Purišića vir might be, because several locations matched the descriptions.

And so, after a couple of years, we came to organise an outing to Sutina, a small river between Sinj and Muć. Since it is a relatively short trail, we wanted to add another location, and we remembered Purišića vir. After a lot of “googling” we uncovered a new piece of the puzzle! One article mentioned how the environmental awareness of the people of that region is at a very low level, since all the streams and springs are buried under rubbish, and that the only one spared was Purišića vir, probably because the local houses “draw” their water from it. Hmmm… That gave us the motivation to broaden the search a little more, and we thought to look at topographic maps and maps with the infrastructure marked on them. The emphasis was on the water-supply network, springs and the like. On one of the maps we discovered quite a few topographic details and local names for some micro-locations. Among them was Purišića vrilo! Vrilo or vir? The difference is enormous, but now we could at least pinpoint the exact position of the church nearest our goal, whether it be a vrilo or a vir.

On the ground everything went fairly smoothly — the church, the stream, the bridge, the water pipes strung out along the path beside the stream. As if in some sort of game, following the pipes, we discovered the vir. It was a vir after all! It lay below the location marked on the map as a vrilo. Logical.

The effort paid off! It really is a wonderful place. Now it was clear why people come here to swim. The little lake looks as though it was designed for that very purpose! Along the edge there is a shallow section with a rocky shelf where you can sit comfortably with your legs dangling over the deeper part of the lake. The water in the lake is crystal clear, and the colour of the lake is gorgeous. And there is no fear whatsoever of whirlpools. Vir is the common local name for places where running water collects. In this case, at that spot the stream fills a stone basin with a small cascade.

Not far from the vir, upstream, lie the remains of an old watermill. It is late spring, and after abundant rains everything is overgrown, so we didn’t want to push any further through the thicket, because little could surpass the beauty of the vir, from which we couldn’t tear ourselves away. We know that further upstream there are a few more ruined watermills, but we can visit those in winter too.

In the end the question arose: should we even publish information about this gem, unknown to the wider public? We all know the dangers of mass tourism. Since we found rubbish dumped beside the vir (!?!), which we picked up and carried with us all the way to the car park where there is a large skip, we nevertheless decided to write about this wonderful place. Namely, the local careless folk (judging by the amount of rubbish, fortunately only a few individuals) clearly know this location well, and since our site is geared towards nature lovers who we believe have a highly developed environmental awareness and who do not belong to the sphere of mass tourism, we think that popularising the location precisely among such a group will further protect this place from devastation and pollution. Perhaps we are incorrigible optimists, but someone has to be that too.

How to get to Purišića vir?

If you are coming from the east, after St. Peter’s church you should immediately turn into the first street that runs alongside the cemetery. Above the cemetery, next to the large rubbish skip, there is a widened area for parking. At the north-western corner of the cemetery a narrow road continues across a small concrete bridge heading north to the last houses, and then continues as a gravel track. Along the way you will come across a slightly larger bridge on the left, but do not turn onto it — keep going along the gravel track instead. After a few hundred metres, at a bend, the track continues winding further uphill, while a narrow footpath branches off here and continues for 70 m along the stream towards the vir.

A short word on ecology and love of one’s homeland