Turf Zone – Fisherrow
Well, that was most fortunate. The time is 2:30 am and I’m lying wide awake in bed pondering whether I should head out for a pre-dawn turf down at Dalkeith Country Park. It’s a great time to get the place to yourself, to see the wildlife and catch the dawn chorus. However, not long after a massive rumble of thunder rattled the glass on the bedside table. This was followed by the most spectacular lightning display I’ve witnessed for many a year. Near constant flashes of cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lighting, accompanied soon after by seemingly continuous rumbles of thunder. The storm took around 30-minutes to pass, before stillness resumed. I was rather glad I wasn’t caught out in that.
This had me thinking, what would I have done if I’d been cycling the darkest depths of Dalkeith Country Park turfing when the storm arrived? I guess my best option would be to seek shelter. Yes, I would likely have a waterproof with me, as I checked the weather forecast and rain was forecast, even thunderstorms from around 3.00 am. Though checking the projected rainfall radar online did not show any thunderstorms passing in that direction.
Actually, shelter for situations such as this is something I’ve considered before. But it would be pot luck if you were close enough to any of them before your got soaked or struck by lightning. My initial thoughts, which seemed logical at the time, though not after reading up on what to do if outdoors during a thunderstorm, was to shelter under a bridge or similar structure.
There are bridges, or underpasses, near zones DalkeithHouse, ParkOfSteel, NewtonChurch and YouAreTheAce and while they will offer protection from rain are not advised during thunderstorms. Apparently, lighting can jump the gap between the structure and the ground and if you are inbetween, zap!. And such structures may have lots of steel in them, another reason to avoid. There’s also a large awning at zone Restoration but being close to a tall metal pole pointing towards the sky during a thunderstorm might not be very wise! I’m sure that Thor, the Norse god of thunder, would take great delight in sending a lighting bolt that way just for a laugh.
The best advice is to get indoors and away from the outer structure of the building. Stay clear of electrical wiring and plumbing, don’t take a shower or use the landline. Unfortunately, should you be turfing at 3.00 am around Dalkeith nothing is open, so you are stuck outdoors. So, what should you do to best protect yourself?
Well, the general consensus is stay away from metal objects including bicycles, avoid anything containing metal, don’t use an umbrella, don’t shelter under trees, cliffs or caves and avoid water. The UK Met Office advises: “squat close to the ground, with hands on knees and head tucked between them. Try to touch as little of the ground as possible; do not lie down on the ground.” I stayed in bed.
Been out recently attempting to better my time for taking 10 zones, managing to match my previous time of 7:45 on the Loanhead Ferret Run, using the original set of 10 zones and not the now slightly shorter set. That’s for another day. I even tried a set of 10 zones here in Bonnyrigg and managed 8:10. Both runs without the benefit of the Region Lord bonus which reduces the take time by 5 seconds, something I like to call the Time Lord bonus after a certain TV series called Dr Who. Just out of interest, I recalculated my 7:45 time for the Loanhead Ferret Run, adjusting my take time as if I was a beginner to turf, a Newbie with rank 0.
As a Newbie, my initial take time would be 30 seconds, reducing to 25 seconds each take with the 5-second GPS bonus. So, with my current take time for rank 58 Turf God, standing at 13.4 seconds, less 5-second GPS bonus, giving me 8.4 seconds per take, this would mean that my revised Newbie time for the Loanhead Ferret Run would add – wait, quick mental arithmetic in progress – another 166 seconds, give or take and ignoring that the Newbie would up-rank to 1 Novice Scout after 5 takes, making my overall time around 10:31 So, best wait until you have a high rank if you want good times for 10 zones.
Now, interesting development on the Loanhead Ferret Run with turfer sjami44 posting a time of 6:09, making use of the slightly shorter set of 10 zones. He does state that he had the Region Lord crown from the second zone, so that’s 9 zones at 5 seconds each off the run time. Personally, I think we need to know if a turfer has held the Region Lord crown during the attempt, it means us lesser mortals can at least know what the actual time was and also means we can know that we might have at least some chance of approaching those times ourselves. I would love to know turfer recycling managed a time of 4:53?
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