It’s 2.30 am, silly o’clock, and I’m lying in bed wide awake, probably due to eating too much dinner yesterday. We ordered in a special fish supper, that’s the breaded fish rather than the usual battered fish. Much kinder on the fish to be breaded rather than battered. Anyway, ChoccyMuffin and I open the box and there’s a mountain range of chips and two large pieces of fish. Even shared between us it’s way too much food ad we are both stuffed full with no space left for pudding! And a fish supper is usually for one person. No wonder so much of the population is overweight.
Anyway, I’m wondering about turf and decided I need a personal and specific focus this Round, something to aim for and to concentrate solely upon, something to keep me enthused about turf. And the first one came to mind, one listed on my Turf To-Do List mentioned in yesterday’s Turf Blog, was the Diversiest medal which requires you to take 1000 round unique zones. That’s 1000 different zones in a single Round. Assists also count towards this medal but revisits obviously do not.
Finding enough zones that are reasonably local to home in Bonnyrigg should not be an issue. Midlothian has 474, East Lothian 687 and City of Edinburgh 1293. That’s 2454 if my mental arithmetic is correct. Further out there’s also the Scottish Borders with 496, West Lothian with 557 and the Kingdom of Fife with 909, bringing the total to 4416. So, more than enough zones to go round. However, not all those zones are within cycling distance from home in Bonnyrigg, so transport may be required.
The plan would be to take local zones that are within reasonable cycling distance for days when the car isn’t available. Then use the car for zones further away when it is available. Most of Midlothian can be done by bicycle as well as parts of Edinburgh, mostly in the south, and I can venture into East Lothian as far as Haddington. That’s around 1000 zones without using the car. But that does include all the time-consuming and difficult to reach zones, which may not be an economical use of time and effort.
Round #173 started yesterday and I’m off to a good start with 75 zones taken in Bonnyrigg, Eskbank and Dalkeith. Added another 25 this morning around Dalhousie and Newbattle with another 15 from Dalkeith Country Park in the evening on a night ride. And a new zone appearing in Bonnyrigg today adds one more. That only leaves another 884 zones to take. Not too bad if you say it quickly and don’t think about it. Around 11% taken in 2-days, and still another 26 days to go.
To keep track of how many zones you’ve taken for the Diversiest medal, if you are a Turf Supporter you can see the total on the Turf App. It’s listed lower down under the lightning symbol as “Uniques taken this round”. You can view them in map format at https://frut.zundin.se/unika.php. On Warded, if your login as usual first, you can also view them in map format. Select Me, then Map of my unique zones and select the appropriate Round from the drop down.
Round #173 is a 28-day Round which is not ideal but will have to do. Would have been better with a 35-day Round. Now here’s a thought. Could I take all 1000 zones this Round without using the car? Now that would be a challenge. How hard can it be? Probably should not have said that.
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