Turf insider April 2021

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Round winners

Congratulations to the winners of round 129: Welshman from Lounais-Suomi biked home his first Gold, rumour has it he was just 'cruising along' the last week with a lead of over 100,000 points to cambla from Scotland who took home the Silver medal and Cruachan from Scotland who took the Bronze medal, all three turfed home more than one million points. Well done mates!

Turf Award 2021

It is time to vote for your favorites in Turf Award 2020. Voting is open until the end of April, but don't wait, click HERE and cast your vote in the four different categories. Turfers from four different countries are nominated and the winners will be announced at the Bonanza in September. Hopefully we will be able to meet and greet with the winners, and if that is not possible, we hope they will be showing up digitally :)

Open Event in Linköping 24th of April

Turf Östergötland welcomes everyone to its first open event ever April 24, 2021. The Östergötland Open 2021 will be covid-19 secured and the location is in Linköping. Turf Östergötland's goal is to host the Bonanza in the future, the event will be a good practice for the club and the non-local turfers will be familiar with the Bonanza area ;) Read more at turfostergotland.se

Region Battle: Scotland vs Skåne

In March Region Scotland was batteling Region Skåne during four weeks, and the battle could be followed at Turfportalen. At first it looked like Skåne would win, but then it turned around and in the end Scotland won with a landslide, the Region battle ended with the score of 11-4 to the Scots. Very well done, mates!

I was checking the score at regular intervals during the battle, as I am sure the following turfers did ;) First out is Kingslayer with his account of the battle, from the point of view of Team Skåne:

Team Skåne

”And that’s the end of the first intergalactic turf challenge ever! Or at least that’s how it felt for us in Skåne. Despite a day with snow we started out good with a 2-1 win first week, we even won on takes which is unheard of! Second week we got to see what the Scottish turfers are made of when they crushed us 3-0. Third week we came back again after great team work the last hours before the Sunday week break which gave us 2-1 again. Down 4-5 before the last week. Last week we “just” needed win on takes and round unique to win the whole competition.

The week started pretty good for us, we got a distinct lead on round unique and played even on takes up until the Horrible Saturday. The last 48 hours the Scots decided sleep is for the weak and kept turfing through the nights. We had one man - Tveskägg - who was determined to meet them head on in the darkness, but one man alone cannot stop a hord of Celtic warriors... The Scotts were unearthly in the end and beat us fair and square 11-4. Congrats to the fighting Scottish men and women who made this a memorable event for us. As usual we have gained personal bests, new medals and generally overachieved. And we have had fun at the same time. Just as a regional competition should be.”

Team Scotland

CSL has written Team Scotland's account of the battle:

”Well, that was a surprise! Never in our wildest dreams did we expect to beat Skåne. Week 1 brought Skåne 2 points to Scotland’s 1 point, and we thought that would be the shape of things to come. But then in Week 2, we had much better weather and won all 3 categories, making it Scotland 4, Skåne 2. In Week 3 we worked very hard, but we couldn’t quite match them, and the score moved to Scotland 5, Skåne 4.

The final week saw much debate about strategy – should we concentrate on takes and give up on round uniques? Opinions varied, and some continued to seek round uniques. The Easter weekend meant that more people were free, and some very effective hamster wheels were set up in several places, which worked very well. Although there were some exhausted Turfers on Sunday morning, they were still chasing round uniques, and overtook in this category in the very last minutes. Thanks to Skåne for being such formidable opponents!

Most of the people in Team Scotland didn’t know one another beforehand, but we’ve exchanged lots of chat and certainly feel as though we know one another now. The competition was exciting and fun, as Kingslayer promised us, and everyone seems to have enjoyed it, winning many medals, and most people moved up several ranks too. I asked some people from different parts of Scotland for comments, and here’s a selection:

BradC, Stirling: “Dunblane has been described as ‘the Västerås of Scotland’, in that it is a small area so over-stuffed with eager Turfers that PPH is meaningless; if you can hang on to a zone for a whole hour in Dunblane, it is a red letter day! This did mean that there was never a problem finding zones to take, and our newness to the sport meant that our zones still had high enough take points to allow us to punch above our weight. If only it wasn't so hilly. We were proud to boast several of the busiest zones in the world during the competition. The fourth-busiest zone, TheLostZone, only existed for three of those four weeks!”

andypatqos, Renfrewshire: “I walked 305 km over 65 hours, most of this with my dog, and some with my wife and kids too. Cyclists will have much bigger figures I guess but for various reasons, mainly the dog, regular cycling doesn’t work for me. Being broadly restricted to Renfrewshire meant some limitations. Met several new Turfers on the way - this year has been the first in 7 that I’ve ever been blocked by someone other than CSL!”

Jarv, East Lothian: “Our area was managed by a small team of walkers and cyclists including an additional non-team Scotland member who cleared zones frantically. Initially the plan was to ‘take some zones and then take some more’. However, strategy evolved significantly over the month. WhatsApp was used heavily to arrange zone clearances, routes and hamster wheels, to share photos and to provide massive encouragement. As time went on, Turfing hours increased significantly. Medals, including World bronze medal for our very own Cruachan, accumulated at an ever-increasing rate, and were celebrated by all. All in all, the team survived the month largely unscathed and are looking forward to the next time!”

Finreir, Scottish Borders: “The Covid restrictions on travel hampered Borders Turfers, and the rules on essential and allowed travel into other areas were assessed and utilised continuously. We soon ran out of easy uniques. Team efforts were centred on the Tweed valley around Peebles, and the Border Abbey towns of Melrose, Kelso and Jedburgh were also raided regularly. Zones were hard won on the steep heights of Glentress and Cademuir forests and wheels performed on the flatter valley floor at Peebles, with great team work achieved.”

tunahunter, East Dunbartonshire: “In areas, like ours, where Turf is less well-established, the contest encouraged us to broaden our horizons. Each of us explored new areas (often in darkness), either first thing in the morning or last thing at night. We connected with nearby Turfers, discussing teamwork and strategy. And thanks to the advice and support of more experienced Turfers in Team Scotland, we really honed our Turfing skills, culminating in a triangular hamster wheel around our town in the final week. It was a great experience to play our part in Team Scotland’s victory. One of the keys to our success was the camaraderie in the team. There were WhatsApp chats full of encouragement, determination, and help with solving problems like how to get to specific zones or where to get best GPS signal!”

klepto7up, Aberdeen: “The Turf match was a wonderful journey where I discovered great places, made new friends and discovered the camaraderie, support and team spirit in the Scottish team was phenomenal.”

CaleZONEian, South Lanarkshire: “Taking part was a great experience and it allowed us to meet new Turfers (virtually and in person). We had to work together to defeat a more experienced and established team. Turf is very popular on the east coast but less so on the west so we didn't have the numbers playing in our area but we did work together and support each other. I cycled over 1600 km during the contest and more than doubled my points target for the round.”

Hodge, Midlothian: “We had a very keen band of local Turfers. We generally kept most areas in Team Scotland hands through the month, no mean feat when you consider distance between the main areas. As the month progressed we also had a lot of other visitors, seeking round uniques. This has left our TP position down for April with adjusted PPH too, with a number of zones now at +6/110, particularly around Penicuik (where we had 3 very active town residents), something which will no doubt settle down as we take it slightly more gently than during the competition.”

Personally I quite miss sitting down at 9 pm to plan my evening trip round zones held by non-Team Scotland Turfers. I saw quite a lot of wildlife on these forays too. Roll on September!”

There you have it, the winners of this March battle is ready to take on the Turf World again in September. Will they manage a double win, just like Uppsala did last year? First a win in a one-on-one Region battle (check!) and then a second win in the Multi Region battle (Sverigekampen 2020) we all hope MaXi will arrange again this year.

What is very clear, is that both teams had lots of fun, got to know each other better and turfed like crazy! Here's hoping we will see teams from more countries signing up for the Multi Region battle in September.

Turfa lugnt!/Safe turfing!

//Munin

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