Turf Zone – CouzyBridge
When you are used to your regular zones being spaced apart in the usual manner, such as few hundreds of meters or even 50m in one instance I can name, when you find your next zone is over 5000 m away, that’s over 3 miles in old measure, you may be presented with something more of a challenge. And that’s what I’ve been faced with many a time on the Edinburgh Roon Turf Mission where the very nature of the mission has the zones almost always well-spaced apart.
During normal turfing you usually make use of cycle paths, back streets and those little secret alleyways you know and love, however, the 3 miles to that next zone on the Edinburgh Roon takes time and you might not want to waste precious time, and your equally precious energy, effectively taking the long, slow way round. This means we are forced onto the main thoroughfare and have to cope with increased traffic and, worse of all, often terrible road conditions, including missing drain covers, badly worn tarmac and worse of all, Edinburgh granite cobbles.
So, I’ve been thinking, as a bicycle riding turfer, about how to go about best dealing with these issues. One example was when I was freewheeling down Dundas Street, a 1000m run downhill from George Street in the New Town to Canonmills by the Water of Leith, on my way to take another zone for the mission, in this instance zone CanonBrig. I’m riding the Brompton G Line with its relatively chunky 20 x 2″ tyres and was doing just fine until I hit a rough patch of badly degraded tarmac and had to slam on the anchors to stay in control. The dappled sunlight rendered the rough patch almost invisible.
Of course, the answer was staring me in the face, bigger wheels and chunkier tyres, and this was exhibited by the young lady on rigid mountain bike with, I estimate 2.5″ tyres who did not miss a beat and sailed across the rough patch as if it wasn’t there. She had also left me standing at the last set of traffic lights, quite disheartening when you are a man on a Brompton. Yes, bigger wheels and bigger tyres might just be the trick.
So, that’s what the plan is. I’ve bought a set of Schwalbe Marathon E-Plus 700 x 40mm tyres for the Ribble CGR gravel bike, the biggest size it had clearance for with mudguards fitted and will get those installed. I’ve also ordered a set of Schwalbe Marathon E-Plus 700 x 55mm tyres for the Sonder Broken Road off-road bike, thinking a mountain bike might be worth a try on the city streets as well. Only drawback I can see at the moment is they are very, very heavy. Will post how they fair in due course.
One personal issue I have with the Edinburgh Roon is the logistics of the mission. Living in Bonnyrigg, which is around 8 miles from the city centre and a 45-minutes cycle, and add to that the return cycle on tired legs after a hard session criss-crossing the city in search of mission zones, and you can see what I mean. This leaves the best option being to use the car to take self and bike into Edinburgh. This in itself presents the problem of parking, never an easy exercise and potentially an expensive one. During the week this can range from £3.80 to £8.20 per hour, depending where you go. There are also restriction on the parking duration.
In addition, I share the car with Cathryn, aka ChoccyMuffin, who is also a keen golfer, which means the car is not always available. So far, I’ve found that parking outwith the parking controlled zones, for example, in the Blackford area, offers a reasonable base to access the mission zones and I try to finish a session with a zone closest to base. There are free spaces further towards the town but its usually difficult to find a vacant space.
Today, a short morning visit to whittle a few more zones from that distant 140 zone total of the Edinburgh Roon, one that never seems to fall very fast. First stop, DynamicEarth, an easy stroll down the Royal Mile. Next, zone EvictedPrince, located by the National Gallery in Princess Street Gardens. However, the next zone, FamilyStudent, is not as easy to reach being over 1.5 miles away in the Newington area to the south. But never fear, the No 31 Bonnyrigg bus is far easier than walking.
My next zone was FaoiDheireadh, one of the University of Edinburgh properties in Soouthside. I thought about getting the bus again but decided to walk this time, continuing onwards for my final zone of the session, FloralClock, off Princess Street. This brought my total 36 mission zones taken, leaving only another 104 still to take. The next zone in the list is ForCheapScots, down on the far side of Holyrood Palace and that’s a mile there and another mile back. Enough for this session.
Actually, I would have liked to continue but other tasks beckon at home. Tomorrow we have scaffolders arriving to erect access for the solar power installation we are getting on Thursday and I wanted to do some work in the attic beforehand, essentially tidying up and laying some flooring down. This all means I’ll probably not get back into Edinburgh until the weekend, but such is life. Back soon.
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