Turf Zone – SayAhhh
Without a Planet Gary Advent Callender to stress me out this year, I’m now happily free to tackle the annual offering from Turf Skåne. Their Turf Advent Calander has 25 turf assignments, one for each day starting on the 1st December and ending on the 25th December. More details on the rules and participant guidelines here. On this page, I’m going to post each of the daily assignments and a short blog about my own adventures. Hope the Google translation makes sense.
Assignment No 5 – 5th December 2025 – The Name of the Place
What is Santa’s real name? Take 8 zones where the first letter of each zone name forms “Nicolaus”.
Interesting, this one. More zones required this time and zones begging with the letter U are rare. So, the research. Start with the Turf Map Tool, draw a polygon around the area I want to turf and download the list of zone names as a .txt file. Copy and paste into MS Word and sort in alphabetical order. Next, highlight all the zones starting with the letters in NICOLAUS and delete the remainder. Most zones are local here in Bonnyrigg with only two on the outskirts, UpperDalPath and OldBattle, both not far away. Next, email list to self to have list available on the phone. Sorted. Ready to turf. Finally, spell check all the errors on this page!
Assignment No 4 – 4th December 2025 – The Highlight of the Year
Take a zone where you can look down on the lower surroundings when you take the zone. Preferably a natural height or building. If you bring your own chair, photo evidence is required.
Where to go to fulfil this assignment? Should I take the easy way out and take the zone 5 minutes away on the bridge at Eskbank railway station? Or should I grab my climbing gear, sharpen the crampons, hire a Sherpa (turfer ChoccyMuffin), head into Edinburgh and take the best view we have, zone ArthursSeat? I chose the latter zone, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. And there’s also a nearby unique zone I want to get as well.
Assignment No 3 – 3rd December 2025 – Donald Duck
Traditions are meant to be followed. Like, for example, Donald Duck on Christmas Eve. Take zones where there are letters that form “DUCK”. Extra prize for the one who can do it with the LEAST number of zones.
Initially, I thought the Swedes were pulling my leg with this one but it seems that, since 1959, in Sweden and on Christmas eve, millions watch a Disney special featuring Donald Duck. well, you learn something new every day.
Now, this one is much better, more options for doing something more challenging and interesting. Of course, for simplicity, one might look for a zone with the word DUCK in it, however, my nearest one would be DuckPondZone in St Andrews, which is a 3-hour round trip in the car or 12-hour ride on the velocipede. Guess I’ll give that one a miss. So, what else? Well, the most obvious one for me is to take four zones one each beginning with the four letters in the word DUCK, and for added fun, in that order. So, that’s my plan for this assignment. Just need to locate the four zones. Back later.
It’s now sometime later and a trip down to the Portobello area of Edinburgh in the afternoon offered up the four zones I was looking for – DurhamPlaza, UnderThePower, CulletWalker and KayakZone. However, chatter on the Turf Scotland WhatsApp group reveals I should have been looking for zones to create the word KALLE ANKA, the Swedish term for Donald Duck. Initially, I thought I’d messed up but zones CulletWalker and KayakZone do contain all the required characters to make KALLE ANKA. Nice one!
Assignment No 2 – 2nd December 2025 – The Day After
Did you have too much mulled wine on the 1st of Advent? Take a zone where you see a place where you can buy headache pills.
Day two offers up another easy assignment with just a single zone required. This time, I chose zone Bonnyrigg located in the centre of the town and with a mini supermarket only a few meters away. I know you can purchase headache pills there as I’ve bought them there previously. Not for drinking too much mulled wine I might add, I cannot stand the stuff, it was when I had a very bad case of life-threatening man flu!
Assignment No 1 – 1st December 2025 – Three-way Intersection
There’s a lot about the number 3 at Christmas. The Trinity. And the three wise men who managed to arrive at the same time even though they came from different places. Take a zone near a three-way intersection (a T-intersection will do too).
A rather easy one to start. We, that’s ChoccyMuffin and myself, had an Amazon parcel to return, so a quite walk up to the town, grabbing a few zones along the way and YourDiary fitted the assignment just fine. Have you all remembered to add your Santa hat to your turfman icon?
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