Turf Blog 22-09-21

Turf zone – RobinAndTuck

Time for a quick catch up on the last couple of days, and night. And to be honest not a lot to report from my local patch. Following an enforced turf-free day on Monday (unable to logon to the turf app and had to wait 24 hours), all I managed that day was a late local scoot about on the Swifty Air to make sure I grabbed enough zones for my daily Five-A-Day and another ten zones for the sake of it.

Yesterday was much more productive with 63 zones taken in Rosewell, Bonnyrigg and Dalkeith with another twenty in the wee small hours, mostly from the local off-road areas. Today, a very windy morning cycle around Mayfield and Newtongrange added another 38 to the pot. Nice to see my zone total sitting at 170 with a PPH of 250 but I don’t expect those to remain for very long.

As I said not much to report about the actual turfing, or the zones themselves. However, in Rosewell an interesting find between zones LouisaGorton and RosewellPath. I noticed a large boulder on a metal stand at the front of Rosewell Parish Church. It turns out to be a fossilised tree stump, probably from the Carboniferous period. We have a small collection of fossil tree ferns we’ve collected locally so it may also be of local origin. It’s similar to the one in the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.

On the road into Whitehill House, some fly-tipping attracted my attention. There are three small tips between zones EnterWhitehill and WhitehillGolf. Closer inspection unearthed another interesting brickmark for my virtual collection. Though indistinct, the brickmark on this glazed bullnose brick reads ROBT BROWN & SON LTD PAISLEY. Note how the “N” in the word BROWN is reversed. There was also a few weapons-grade half bricks with the NIDDRIE brickmark. Locally any old half brick is often called a Niddrie.

During my day turfing I’d left a few zones untaken with the thought of some night turfing on the Swifty kick scooter later on. The weather forecast looked fair and mild, with potentially clear skies and an almost full moon producing the type of conditions I favour for night turfing. The first few zones were located at Broomieknowe golf course and Melville driving range, then it was across Eskbank to the Newbattle area, grabbing about a dozen off-road zones, mostly in the woods.

The season is certainly changing fast towards autumn, with drifts of fallen leaves beginning to accumulate, often making it difficult to see where the tree roots, hidden rocks and dips and hollows are located. It was also a windy night, the rustle of drying leave son the trees drowning out most of the background sounds, though I did notice a few tawny owls calling in the trees. Human activity was few and far between. About the only action I saw was a police van on blue lights (no siren) leaving Eskbank and heading for the A7. Hope it wasn’t me they were after for kick scooting on a golf course at night!

Turf zone – WayOfAndrew

Today was also a very windy day, making my turf around Newtongrange and the Mayfield area of Dalkeith quite challenging. I had planned to turf Gorebridge as well but by lunchtime I was tired and my legs were weary. I suspect I’ve not fully recovered from my visit from Miss Influenza Lurgi, though I suppose two hours’ hard kick scooting around midnight last night might just be catching up with me as well.

There’s been a few messages banded about, around the start of the current Turf Ultimate Region Fight 2021, expressing concern about the possibility of someone inadvertently, or perhaps even deliberately, using your turf name while it’s been changed to reflect team membership for competitions.

Your usual turf name might be, just as a fun example, NudusMaximus, and it’s temporarily changed to TS-NudusMaximus during the competition, TS referring to Team Scotland. While TS-NudusMaximus is in use, there is nothing to stop anyone signing up with your original turf name NudusMaximus, though that’s probably unlikely to actually happen. However, there is a way to avoid this, although it’s quite a long process.

You can safeguard your original turf name by carrying out the following steps:

  1. Change your turf name from NudusMaximus to TS-NudusMaximus.
  2. Sign out of the Turf app on the phone.
  3. Un-install the Turf app from the phone.
  4. Re-install the Turf app on the phone.
  5. Run Turf and sign up with original turf name, i.e. NudusMaximus.

At this point you have stopped anyone else from using your original turf name. Now, to get everything back to your “active” turf name. i.e. TS-NudusMaximus, carry out the following:

  1. Sign out of the Turf app on the phone.
  2. Un-install the Turf app from the phone.
  3. Re-install the Turf app on the phone.
  4. Run Turf and sign up with your turf name, i.e. TS-NudusMaximus.

Yes, this seems all very long-winded but really doesn’t take all that long. I’ve tested it out myself and it works just fine. Once the competition has finished and you no longer need TS before your turf name, do the following. Essentially reversing what you did in the first instance. Note you may need to authenticate after each re-install.

  1. Change your turf name from TS-NudusMaximus back to NudusMaximus.
  2. Sign out of the Turf app on the phone.
  3. Un-install the Turf app from the phone.
  4. Re-install the Turf app on the phone.
  5. Run Turf and sign up with original turf name, i.e. NudusMaximus.

Of course, this would all be so much easier if there was a way of simply signing out of the Turf app and signing in with another turf name. To the best of my knowledge there isn’t, turf automatically signs you in each time it’s loaded, though I’d be happy to be corrected. Back soon.

Copyright ©2021 Gary Buckham. All rights reserved.

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