Turf Zone – ArthursSeat
Following yesterday’s bike and foot events in the Turf Bonanza 2025, though mostly the foot event for some reason, another fresh collection of turfer unique zones had appeared during the day. Thankfully, mostly located in and around the city centre. There are also a few isolated ones spread across the city outskirts but just a little too far away. A 4-mile roundtrip on a bicycle for one zone is a zone too far.
I had a cunning plan this morning, well, sort of a cunning plan as not all actually went to plan. I guess due to a slight lack of forethought or planning on my part. My cunning plan was to head into Edinburgh early, at least getting the pedals turning before 5.00 am while all sensible turfers are still tucked up in bed. It would also be very quiet with only a few delivery vehicles, taxi cabs and private hire vehicle out on the streets.
The only issue I hadn’t considered with my cunning plan was that some locations would be closed. The first was Edinburgh castle esplanade. The security guard would not let me in before 9.30am when it opened officially, stating it was actually a construction site at the moment for erecting the staging for events. Okay, fine, but it would still be a construction site at 9.30 am so what’s the problem? Anyway, turfer unique Tweety lost for the moment.
The other was in the turfer unique Florence at zone OldCollege. It’s closed on Sundays.
However, despite missing out on two turfer uniques – and another I missed altogether due to operator error – I still managed to collect another 12 this morning the collection bringing my total up to 536. Of that 536, I’ve added 51 this week, almost all due to the Turf Bonanza 2025 bringing turfers to the area.
One problem that has plagued me these past few days was an issue with my bike phone mount. On four separate occasions I’d hit a rough patch of road and the phone flew off the handlebars, landing in the road, once just narrowly avoiding being run over by a car. The mounts I use are from Mous and are generally okay. I’m not sure what to issue actually is as I cannot manually make the phone come loose without pressing the release buttons. Hopefully the problem is down to operator error.
Now, back to the Turf Bonanza 2025 bike event I took part in the other day. I think I said it was fun, but now, thinking back, was it fun, did I enjoy myself? I’m not so sure now. I’ve never been very competitive and wasn’t expecting to be during this event. I enjoyed cycling the Brompton about the place, taking zones and so on but I cannot help think that I was just going through the motions and showing my support for the event. Strange how when you look back and think about things they seem different from the feelings you had at the time. Oh well, there’s always next year and Sconanza Glasgow 2025.
Right, perhaps I should strive to be more competitive and start thinking that way for the next event? So, what does it take to be more competitive, get a higher finishing placement and perhaps even win! Ah, probably over thinking a little there.
I would think the first thing is fitness. The fitter you are the quicker you can pedal, walk or run and not forgetting stamina as well, so get some mile sin before the event. A 2-hour event is a fair trek when in competition. The next is know the event area. Local knowledge is very useful. Get out there beforehand and plod those streets, check out the back alleyways, cycle paths and anything that might be a potential shortcut. Anything that avoids you having to wait at pedestrian crossing or traffic lights is a good thing. Of course, I would never council ignoring such things, if you know what I mean.
Something else that is useful in these competitions is to study your opponents, what are their strengths and weaknesses. Do they tend to follow the same strategy or do the just see what happens at the time and plan from there? And that brings us to strategy. There is much talk about strategy, you should do this and you should do that. However, in my humble opinion there are too many variables to have any fixed plan of action. The placing of the zones, the competitors themselves, other non-event turfers, even the weather can play a part as well as many others factors, particularly what is occurring at any given point of time and place during the event.
Though I have only limited experience of turf events, it seems that you can never plan more than a few zones ahead, often you are lucky to even achieve that. You try to think three zones ahead but up pops a ghosting event turfer at the second zone and you’re plan is up creek and you need to plan again, quickly as things move quickly in a turf event. More than once, I wondered where the heck do you come from? Anyway, just a few thoughts. And to finish, a single speed Brompton is not the best bike to be competitive on. Back soon.
Copyright ©2025 Gary Buckham. All rights reserved.
