Turf Zone – FiggatePark
Back into Edinburgh today hunting more unique zones. Mostly centred around the Craigmillar area but taking in a few outlying isolated zones left over from previous visits. My steed was again my ever-faithful Swifty Air kick scooter. One thing I must say about Edinburgh is the pleasant surprise at finding so many green spaces, ponds with plenty of bird life and footpaths and walkways all over the place. Ideal turfing country.
As far as uniques go, today’s session added another 37 zones to my tally, bringing me to 1701 leaving another 699 until that long sought 2500 unique medal in in the bag. My zone take for the day was actually 47, most taken from turfer SpookyWood-y, which means I must have taken 10 zones that I’ve taken before. Surprising really but must be right.
Now, what to say about today session? Well. weather was very mild, or at least seems mild to me when I’m generating all that heat from kick scooting. Didn’t even need a jacket today it was that warm. Mind you all the folk I met were wearing big winter coats, wholly hats and warm gloves. Figgate pond, burn and park was a nice surprise, having not been there before. Nice to have lunch while watching the birds on the pond. Quite hilly in places, for example, Craigmillar and also Northfield, both had me walking the scooter for a way. Pity the Turf app doesn’t have alternative map options which would show height contours. Would be good for route planning. Perhaps one day.
Must mention one zone, InvisiblePath. Thought I might have to take the long way round from there to reach my next zone, HotelStables, back down Prestonfield Gardens, along Prestonfield Avenue and finally up Prestonfield Road. However, I took a chance that the “invisible” path in the woods bordering Prestonfield golf course might emerge near the zone. And fortunately, my luck was in, and I popped out exactly where desired. Saved a wee bit of time and effort. (I was getting rather weary by now).
I’ve taken most of the uniques in the eastern half of Edinburgh, bar a few uniques around Holyrood Park, about 10 in total. I deliberately left these for another trip as one of them is at the top of Netherhill (zone Netherhill) as I didn’t feel up to pushing the Swifty uphill today. Perhaps next time. However, looking at the stats from turf.lundkvist.com, I’m actually only 44% of the way with 543 taken out of 1222 zones. So still some way to go. I’m doing better with Midlothian, with 3677 of 428 taken (88%). Most of the reaming uniques are in the Pentland Hills. East Lothian isn’t too bad either with 504 out of 658 zones (77%).
Now, with an Idea. Wouldn’t it be fun to have something like a National Turfing Day, for example, a Fancy Dress Turfing Day where we might dress up accordingly and perhaps meet somewhere for a blether, or how about Silly Trousers Turfing Day where we simply wear silly or unusual trousers. Another one was Tartan Turfing Day where turfers would wear some item of tartan while out turfing. Just a thought.
And finally, I want to clear some space in the shed, so I’m going to be selling one of my bikes, my Surly Krampug. It’s based on a medium Surly Pugsley frame and forks and is a 29’er plus with 3″ wide tyres, Shimano Alfine 8-speed hub gear, Avid BB7 disc brakes and I’ll also include the Surly frame bag, Alpkit handlebar bag and rear rack as well, even the bell! Will be asking £750. Full specification and picture will be posted soon. Back soon.
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