Turf Blog 30-04-22

Tomorrow sees the end of round #142 and the start of the next turf round. Yes, you’ve guessed correctly, round #143. My turf activities during round #142 have been rather poor, I just haven’t had the impetus to get out there and do some serious turfing, just managing to keep up the good old Daily-Five. Just another 132 days to go. Only! Back at the start of the round I’d set myself the goal of 500,000 points but that was not to be, at least this round, anyway. I did manage over 208,000 points with a 31st placing in Scotland, so I should be pleased with that.

Perhaps my greatest distraction from turfing this round has been my interest in photography and hunting for goblins, or rather creating photographs of goblin faces from natural features found on trees, bushes and hedges. I use the term goblin for lack of anything else to call them. Some are more alien or insect looking than anything found on Earth.

I’ve now amassed some 742 photographs and becoming somewhat obsessed with the subject. Particularly when you never know what will turn out when you create the image. Some of them look more like the work of a fantasy artist than a photograph. But on the plus side I was able to combine this with turfing, with trips to Dalkeith Country Park, the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and just about every patch of woodland locally that has a few zones. The image above is actually the end of a 25 mm wide elderberry branch discovered in a hedge near zone BonnyriggPath.

The main highlight of this round was a trip to Kinross and a circuit of the Loch Leven Heritage Trail on my trusty Swifty Air kick scooter. Grabbed 46 zones in total, 26 of them dotted around the loch. A location well recommended for a turf visit. Of course, you don’t have to kick scoot around the loch, the 13-mile route is an easy cycle or decent mostly flat walk, whatever takes your fancy. I would always suggest a kick scooter, but then I don’t do normal stuff.

Pleased to see some zones appearing in my hometown of Selkirk, down in the Scottish Borders. Not had the chance to take them yet but will do soon. Could do with another 20 or so to make the day more challenging. In fact, I’ll be down there tomorrow with Cathryn but will be visiting my mother to spread pea gravel in the rockery and will probably not get the time to go turfing.

To finish, I just want to mention that following the computer problem I had back on the 12th April, I seem to have lost quite a few emails, some of which were from turfers and I’d yet to reply to them. Not sure how I managed to lose them but they are most definitely missing. If you sent me anything, either by email or through the contact form, in the past month or so and I haven’t replied, this is why. Please resend if you wish.

Have also been having bother getting bombarded by spam, spam, spam, despite multiple layers of anti-spam. Most come via the online contact form. Even with the added feature to check senders are actually human, (no offence to visiting aliens!) stuff still gets through. Guess that’s the price of having an online presence. Back again soon.

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