Turf Zone – Beaufort12
Now, forget for a moment that you have any knowledge of turfing, difficult I know, but please try. Then imagine the scene you see before you. You come across a cyclist, fully togged head to toe in waterproofs, baggy trousers, a soggy jacket a tad too small for them (too small on account of the multiple layers worn below in a futile attempt to stay warm) yet they seen drenched to the bone and shivering like a shivery thing. The waterproof gloves are anything but and somewhere hidden behind the jacket hood, scarf and helmet there might be a face. As to whether the cyclist is male or female is impossible to tell.
The time is sometime after midnight, and the weather is too extreme even for ducks, even the dodgy denizens of the night have stayed indoors. Rain is hurling horizontally along the street; the northerly wind is blowing the proverbial hoolie and said cyclist is making minimal progress towards their goal whatever that might be? (Remember, you know nothing of turf!) And while you are unaware of this, the cyclist has been out on their bike, braving the worse weather for a decade, for the last 12-hours. Add that they have neglected to fuel themselves properly and are just about running on empty with the added fun that a thumping headache provides when you don’t drink enough fluids.
So, you have this imaginary picture in your mind or perhaps have actually witnessed something of this in the real. Or perhaps you might even have a personal recollection or memory of such a sight in the back of your own mind. You might ask yourself what is this poor soul doing? Are they training for the SAS selection course or getting in some practice before they tackle the 1000-miles of LeJog? Well, none of these in fact, they are actually playing a game called turf. And, I might add, of their own free will.
Okay, this is perhaps one of the more extreme examples of the game of turf but when you start thinking like an outsider, one who does not play turf, a muggle perhaps, turfing might sometimes be viewed as very strange indeed. Yes, much of the time the turfer will simply be travelling from on location to another, from one zone to another zone and nothing untoward there, but sometimes, perhaps even quite often, turfers do strange, possibly even suspicious things.
For example, and I speak as an experienced turfer here, there’s a zone close to home, it goes by the name NotBonny, where you proceed along the road, suddenly stop, dismount your bicycle and walk for three meters into the grass. Once there, you stop for 20 seconds or there abouts, retrace your steps, mount your steed again and pedal away. Nothing strange about this to a turfer but I’ve had some questioning looks on more than one occasion.
Another example might be when you GPS is playing silly buggers and your turfname is all over the place, everywhere except in the zone. One zone in particular comes to mind, JohnKnoxZone on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. I recall one occasion when I first started turfing trying take that zone, spending at least 10-minutes wandering to and fro trying to get the turfman inside the zone area. I restarted the app, restarted the phone, even tried approaching for different directions, all to no avail. Eventually I took the zone, standing in the middle of the road hoping the zone would take before the No 35 bus ran be over.
Turfers will sometimes to almost anything to take a zone, and I’ll quote another example zone here, IslandIsland, on the Heriot-Watt Camus at Riccarton, Edinburgh. As the zone name suggests, the zone is located on a body of water called, by someone will little imagination I would suggest, The Loch. In other words, it’s a duck pond. A turfer viewed by a non-turfer might see someone stop at the edge of the pond, remove socks and shoes, check their phone repeatedly, then wade out into the freezing cold water, feet sinking into the stinking mud at the bottom of the pond. After a few meters, they will pause for a few second before returning to the shore. They might even take a selfie.
Sometimes turfer behaviour, when viewed by the outsider, might not only be strange but downright suspicious. There have been many examples posted on turf social media when a turfer might act in a suspicious manner. For example, occasionally a zone might be temporarily out of reach, perhaps behind a security fence while construction work or the like is in progress. The turfer will sometimes find ways to reach that zone, perhaps climbing the security fence or even squirming under the fence, such is their will to take said zone. Definitely a suspicious activity in any one’s book, except another turfer, that is.
Turfing, seen through the eyes of a non-turfer, could definitely seem rather strange. Turfers will go out at all hours of the day, even the middle of the night, and in any weather, all year round. They will regularly stop in a zone, wait a few seconds, then continue on their way. They will sometimes head in a certain direction, stop for those same few seconds, they return the way they came. They will sometimes stop suddenly in what appears to be the middle of nowhere, walk around in circles, they head of in another direction.
Then there’s the oddness of the game of turf itself. While non-turfers might witness strange activities in the physical part of the game, the taking of zones, there’s also the virtual aspect of the game. On many occasions I tried to explain turf to a non-turfer. You know, you go the certain place where there’s an invisible thing called a zone, and you take it, and you get points, even medals. But the zones aren’t really there, you only see them on the turf app and the medals are not real either, only virtual. Sometimes hard to explain the point of it all actually is.
It gets worse when you start explaining deeper into turf. You mention you get points for taking a zone but the number of poinst varies depending on how often the zone is taken. And that may change each month when Tinkerbell and Fairy do their stuff. Then there’s PPH, a number of Points Per Hour for each hour you hold a zone. Unique zones takes a bit of explaing and TvT even more explaining. By the time you get to FTT, you might as well stop and get back to turfing, unles that is, they are genuainly interested and ask how they can find out more. I usually hand them a PlanetGary card, though I’ve never discovered anyone who actually became a turfer afterwards. Back soon.
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