On the 10th September 2021, I started a year-long undertaking, the Daily Five, to take at least five turf zones every day for an entire year, all 365 days. I worked my way through the various medals, first gaining the Daily-10, then the Daily-30, the Daily-60, the Daily-90 and penultimately, the Daily-180 medal. Today, I’ve less than 20 days to go until that cherished Daily-365 medal is added to the collection, hopefully.
This leads me to thinking about what next? And to be honest, I just don’t know. I find myself struggling a lot of the time to find much enthusiasm for the game of turf, almost becoming one of the 356,250 turfers who have, since turf first began all those years ago, signed up for the game, perhaps played a while, then departed for whatever reason. But I’m not quite there yet, at least while I’m still working away at the Daily-365. After that, who knows?
However, in an attempt to jolly myself along to keep on turfing, I thought that listing all the turf related things I could try might just be enough to keep me going, getting out there and taking zones. It may also serve to enthuse others to also keep on turfing. So, here we go.
- Take all the unique zones in Midlothian.
- Take all the unique zones in Edinburgh.
- Take all the unique zones in the Scottish Borders.
- Take all the unique zones in East Lothian.
- Aim for the next Rank, in this case Rank 50 – Turf King
- Set a Round target, say 500,000 points. Challenging!
- Go for Take 15,000 medal (requires about 600 takes).
- Go for Unique 2500 medal (requires about 970 unique).
- Go for Greed 350 medal, a very tough challenge!
- Attempt Diversiest medal, 1000 round unique zones.
- Attempt El Staminatore medal, 200 turf zones in 24 hours.
- Attempt Staminatrix medal, 400 turf zones in 24 hours.
- Region or Country medal, need 1,000,000 points plus. Dream on!
- Maintain or improve my League position.
- Turf the Seven Hills of Midlothian.
- Turf the Seven Hills of East Lothian.
- Turf the Seven Hills of West Lothian.
- Turf the Seven Hills of the Kingdom of Fife.
- Participate in some local turfing events.
- Just chill out and simply take zones and collect points.
And then there’s all the ideas I’m posted about making turf videos.
- A turfing loop of the Dalmeny Estate with the Swifty Air.
- Circuit of Loch Leven in Fife on the Swifty Air kick scooter.
- Coastal turfing, Aberlady to North Berwick, by fat bike.
- Coastal turfing, South Queensferry to Bo’ness, by Swifty Air.
- Visit Dechmont Law, sight of an alleged UFO close encounter.
- Kick scooting the Water of Leith Walk, Leith to Balerno.
- Turfing the zones in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh.
- Turfing the Musselburgh to Penicuik cycleway.
- Turfing the Pencaitland Railway Path by kick scooter.
- Turfing the Seven Hills of Edinburgh on the Swifty Air.
- Walking the coast from North Berwick to Tantallon Castle.
- And all the items in the other list above.
And then there’s the biggest, perhaps craziest option, something I’ve mentioned more than once before.
“To start turfing from scratch again, going right back to the beginning, starting at 0 zones, 0 points and Rank 0 – Newbie and creating a new turf name. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to enjoy the delights of gaining all those medals again, the Ghost Minute, the Darkest Ninja and all the rest? I think I also mentioned about doing it differently this time round, for example, only taking unique zones, and only on the kick scooter. I must admit I’m very tempted. I already have a new turf name in mind but I’m keeping that to myself for now.
The first question I want to ask myself is why start again? Well, firstly I’ve not got much enthusiasm at the moment for turf. I’ve reached the stage where rising up the ranks takes a lot of effort and all the medals that are relatively easy to achieve have been achieved. I’m rapidly losing interest with the only aspect of turf that is keeping me going being the Daily 5 and that will not last forever.
So, what would starting afresh give me? I think the main reasons are, the ability to relive all the fun of planning and achieving medals and rising up the ranks. Then there’s also the idea of doing things differently and that’s something I want to look into in more detail. Here’s a few options on the matter.
-
- only go for unique zones, never take a zone more than once.
- take all the zones in a single area e.g. Midlothian, then Edinburgh.
- limit transport to a single method e.g. walk, kick scoot or cycle.
- exclude the use of motorized transport such as car or bus.
Of course, these may limit the ability to try for some of the medals but that would all be part of the challenge. Yes, I’m going to give this further careful thought and come up with a defined framework that I’d try to follow. Hmm, very tempted indeed. Just need to make that final leap.”
Aye, there’s certainly plenty to keep me going. Better get started then! Back soon.
Copyright ©2022 Gary Buckham. All rights reserved.
