Round winners – August 2024 (Round #170)
Congratulations to the winners of round August 2024: Marcus_P from Hamburg biked home a Gold to complement his two Bronzes, Veit from Hamburg added a Silver to his medal row and Nybegynner from Østlandet turfed home the first Bronze for Norway. Well done mates!
Upcoming events
If you are organizing an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into the newsletter :)
Bonanza 2024 on the 14th of September in Enköping
Over 200 turfers are signed up for the two Bonanza heats this year. Are you one of them? It is not too late to sign up for the Events.
Sign up with Swedish text HERE.
Sign Up with English text HERE.
Don't forget that the Turf Awards for 2023 will be handed out during the banquet.
Turf Ultimate Region Fight 2024
The Ultimate Region Fight will go for five weeks this year. If you are not participating yourself, you can keep an eye on the competition HERE. There are several teams from Sweden, UK and Germany competing this year.
Let's talk about raising issues a bit.
The most common issue is a zone issue and this category can be divided into:
- The zone is missing an attribute or has the wrong attribute. This is usually very straight forward to correct.
- The placement of the zone has become unsuitable over time, like a public space has become private or changes in the environment has made the zone dangerous to take. A zone issue of this type, is often also easy to correct and neccessary in order to keep zones active in the game and safe to take. Keep 'em coming!
- The zone name has a spelling mistake or doesn’t make sense to the player or feels unsuitable for that zone.
For zone names, be aware that a name CAN be misspelled deliberatly, eg Ssslinget in Uppsala. Local slang can be used, and is often encouraged thus making the zone name more fitting for that area.
Capital letters are used for each distinct word in a zone name (no spaces) – BigGreenCar would be correct, BiggreenCar or BigGREENcar would not. This is not always easy if you are not native to the language. And sometimes, zonemakers like little jokes, like SandaVägen is a better zone name than Sandavägen where the first is more fun since it means to "put sand on the road" (to make it less slippery during winter) whereas the second is just the street name close to where the zone is located.
Issues regarding Name change can be tricky, and generally if the zone is old, the old name stays UNLESS something has changed in the area close to the zone, like FillItUp next to a gas station becomes NoMoreGaz when the gas station is torn down. One thing to remember is we have people with Swedish as their first language setting UK zones and people with English as their first language setting Swedish zones – we try our best but you might see zone names in your country not in the native language and we are all human and make mistakes, especially in a foreign language! And sometimes a second language "mistake" can make for a fun zone name :)
Despite what some people think, it is quite ok with ”Zone” in the zone name, an English name for Swedish zone is also ok and a mixture of different languages in a zone name can be quite fun! Turf wasn't created with linguistic correctness in the zone names in mind. Quite the opposite really; whimsical Swenglish names, puns and odd names has been encouraged, even though many names are dry ones with no other inspiration than the street names near-by. The developers and Turf crew haven't decided to change this, and will from now on be more strict when it comes to changes in zone names.
So remember that the issue system is for issues affecting the game, not improvement suggestions. Turf Crew welcomes comments on zone names, especially creative zone names, but each one is dealt with manually by a human, so unless there is a spelling mistake or something has changed in the zone to warrant a name change, think twice (or thrice) before writing an issue about a name change especially on old zones. Old zone names are part of Turf history, eg in the beginning zone names could not contain special characters such as the Swedish letters "å ä ö". Today they can, but you will still come across zone names without them. I find those kinda cute and hope you do to! And as always, be kind!
More about zone making can be found HERE on the Turf Wiki. It gives you some idea what is ok and what is not. I especially encourage you to re (and maybe re-read) Maqqans excellent blog post about making zones, link can be found at the end of the Zone Guidelines Wiki page.
Recently a post in Turf Stockholm Facebook group had turfers talking about embarrassing moments when out turfing. I think we all can recognize ourselves in at least one of the following: 1. Dog owner holding the dog on a tight leech IN the zone and expecting to bike by, but instead you stop, take the zone and turn around the way you came. 2. Dragging the bike out on a beach between sunbathing people. 3. Leaving the bike on a forest path to walk 50-200 m to a zone with your bike helmet still on. 4. Biking past the same jogger on a track 4 or 5 times. 5. Intruding on people in romantic situations, like on an out of the way bench next to a pond. 6. By biking real SLOOOW through a zone to prevent from having to put down your feet and doing a full stop. 7. When meeting non-turfers and not wanting to explain what you are doing, side-stepping the other person in order to take the zone when your GPS is acting up. 8. Taking zones at nudist beaches fully clothed. 9. Taking church zones when either a wedding or a funeral is happening. 10. When you take a water zone on the fly, removing all your clothes thinking you are alone, but when you emerge from the water, you are not alone any longer...
Do YOU have an embarrassing moment not covered above or with a twist? Please write to insider@turfgame.com and share with the Turf community :)
Turf Picture of the Month
This months Turf Picture is of the zone Hubertus taken by DasHuhn, "A zone at the end of the world. Crazy":
If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!
Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!
//Munin
...if you want to contribute to future Turf Insiders, send your story to insider@turfgame.com :) C'mon and share your big and small stories with the Turf world.
Round winners – July 2024 (Round #169)
Congratulations to the winners of round July 2024: IndoorsyHermit from Skåne took Gold, Tempest from Stockholm added a Silver to his Gold from last year and Aicar from Stockholm biked home a Bronze. Well done mates!
Upcoming events
If you are organizing an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com a couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into Turf Insider :)
SåsTurf, Alingsås, 10th of August
For the first time there will be an Open Turf event in Alingsås, Sweden. There will be a foot, bike and a water heat followed by an outdoor BBQ (everyone brings their own food and drink). Full details HERE (only in Swedish). The meeting place for the event will be near Mjörnvallen in Alingsås between the zones Mjörn and KongoBridge.
Skåne Open, 24th of August
Participation will give you the event medal. You can read more about it HERE.
Bonanza 2024 on the 14th of September in Enköping
Finally it is possible to sign up for this year's Bonanza.
Sign up with Swedish text HERE.
Sign Up with English text HERE.
Don't forget that the Turf Awards for 2023 will be handed out during the banquet.
Turf Ultimate Region Fight 2024
MaXi is once again organising the annual multi-region fight in September 2024. Same procedure as last year. Read more about it here:
https://turfportalen.se/event/pre/ultimateregionfight2024
https://turfportalen.se/event/ultimateregionfight2024/rules/en
https://turfportalen.se/event/ultimateregionfight2024/rules/sv
I hope you have had a good summer so far and that you all have managed to see new zones, turn old zones purple, meet old Turf friends and make new Turf friends.
In summer travelling turfers is a common thing. And meeting travelling turfers is nice when you can't travel yourself. In July I had the joy of both meeting travelling turfers in my home town, and meeting great turfers when travelling myself. One morning in the middle of June, I took an Assist with magnefikdoja on my morning bike ride. magnefikdoja with non-turfing partner were on a morning walk, visiting Uppsala for a few days. They were enjoying the flat nature of Uppsala as well as being able to take the zones close to the hotel several times, since the activity in Uppsala is much higher than where they were from.
Then I went travelling with a fellow turfer to Nyköping for a few days. After lunch one day, we met up with K.Rune, one of the first turfers in Nyköping. We assisted in a zone, realized we were going in the same direction, so asked if K.Rune could guide us. K.Rune did, giving us the best route to the next six zones and along the way, K.Rune was awarded the medal Assist-25. Win-win for everyone.
Another Crew member, kjtindall, had a nice meeting with the newish turfer Munchinpants. kjtindall waited in a zone so Munchinpants could Assist. kjtindall had seen the turfer on the map, but never met up. Now kjtindall had the chance to find out the origin of Munchinpants nick. 'Cuz some nicks are just that much more interesting than others and you just WANT to know the story behind!
Let's hope the rest of the summer (and yes, August is a summer month!), will be filled with interesting meetings, new zones and old zones.
Turfing alone can be fun when you need a bit of peace or just want to pursue your own goals! But turfing with other people can also be fun (and often a way to get everyone more points overall) and that is one of the reason we have Assist. Assist is where one turfer takes the zone and one (or maybe many many more) assists - the person that fills up their 'take bar' first gets the zone and the pph, the assister(s) gets the take points but no pph.....but the assister can of course then take the zone immediately after the block has expired.
Turf encourages Assists, so much so there is a nice serie of medals for assisting zone take overs (starts with Assist-5) and a medal serie with increasing number of assisters (Crowdy medals - which go up in fibonacci order number). Bear in mind that the taker of the zone doesn't get the medals though!
Do you have to assist if someone is coming? You don't and you might have a good reason for that (you are in a hurry or you are in competition with them in a league or you just want to be on your own!). Often people will ask in the chat for an Assist - which you might want to respond to or not! It is up to you. Sometimes Crew get complaints about 'blocking' where Assist opportunities are ignored or not seen and people get quite upset about this. Now we encourage, courteous behaviour on both sides - it is often nice to wait a few seconds to help out a fellow turfer or sometimes to meet and have a chat with a new turfer! But also, be understanding if a turfer doesn't want to wait - they may have other challenges to deal with that you don't know about. As with all things turf, being nice goes a long way and it is never OK to get angry or abuse someone for not assisting - it is up to them really, they were in the zone first And it is also never OK to abuse a turfer for taking your zones, that is the game after all!
Turf Picture of the Month
This month Turf Insider had more than 10 entries for Turf Picture of the Month, thank you for all the lovely pictures. Only one can be featured here and this months Turf Picture is of the zone AnsileSea taken by Fashven:
If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!
Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!
//Munin
...if you want to contribute to future Turf Insiders, send your story to insider@turfgame.com :) C'mon and share your big and small stories with the Turf world.
Finally it is possible to sign up for this year's Bonanza. Go to uturf.se for info and registration. Don't forget that the Turf Awards for 2023 will be handed out during the banquet.
gratis film online
Round winners – June 2024 (Round #168)
Congratulations to the winners of round June 2024: Király from Skåne took Gold while setting a new round points record of 2873119 points, uppuppuppner from Västra Götaland added a Silver to his previous Bronze (next time Gold?) and ChilliFarmer from Scotland ended up on third place for the second time. Well done mates!
Upcoming events
If you are organizing an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com a couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into the news letter :)
SåsTurf, Alingsås, 10th of August
For the first time there will be an Open t'Turf event in Alingsås, Sweden. There will be a foot, bike and a water heat followed by an outdoor BBQ (everyone brings their own food and drink). Full details HERE (only in Swedish). The meeting place for the event will be near Mjörnvallen in Alingsås between the zone Mjörn and KongoBridge.
Skåne Open, 24th of August
Participation will give you the event medal. You can read more about it HERE.
Bonanza 2024 on the 14th of September in Enköping
The invitation to this much awaited Event is being crafted by the Bonanza-comittee. Any day now it will be time to sign up! I know everyone has already penciled in the 14th of September in their calendar, but it is not official until you have signed up. Be patient, it is coming!
Turf Ultimate Region Fight 2024
MaXi is once again organising the annual multi-region fight in September 2024. Same procedure as last year. Read more about it here:
https://turfportalen.se/event/
https://turfportalen.se/event/
https://turfportalen.se/event/
Summer is here and it is the perfect time to go for those a bit more time-consuming medals, like the Staminatrix, Revisitor or Insomnia. Different medals have different difficulties. Insomnia requires you to more or less stay awake for 24 hours since you have to take one zone every hour. You can get some sleep by taking the zones just before and just after the hour, then go to bed and set the alarm for the following hour. Like take 1 02.55 am, take 2 03.05 am, then sleep til take 3 at 04.55. This requires plenty of zones close to where you live. Or you can just soldier thru all the 24 hours and then go home to sleep!
One turfer in Västerås finally decided the conditions were right to go for a Staminatrix in June. Here is a shortened version of the story he submitted to Turf Insider:
"My name is Mattias Persson, turfnick mattiasp74. I have been thinking of attempting to go for the Staminatrix since I started. The conditions had to be the following: 1. Summertime with maximum sun time. 2. Stable weather. No temperatures over 25 Celsius or rainy becauce I want my mobile on the from of the bike 3. Free time. Be at home or at a place were there was a lot of zones.
During midsummer of 2024 these conditions matched. I went to bed at 19 and set the alarm at 00:10 just so i could start and finish the same day, but i could not sleep so i went up and started while the sun was still up. The time was 21:36:03 according to warded when I started up on Midsummer Eve.
My plan was pretty much reliant on geography. The city of Västerås has many hills with a lot up and downs and the river Svartån crosses the city so I had to take that into account. I also had to plan my rest and recharge of the phone.
Here are some tips for you who want to try it. Do this when the night is the shortest so that you can avoid having lights on to much. Be rested before you start. Plan your stops. Both you and the cell phone need to recharge. Power batteries take longer to charge. Remember that a long distance race like Vasaloppet have controls every 10 km were they offer food and drink. According to warded I travelled around 125 km, but this is not included distance from my home to the start and finish or the route I took. I might have travled 135 km in total. Bring a lot of water. I filled my water bottle three times becauce I drank so much. You will get thoughts about quitting, especially during the dark hours. Push them away! And last but not least, have fun while you do this."
It took Mattias four sessions with "food and re-charging the phone" breaks in-between, with both a 50 k and a 75 k Roundpointer medal and Greed-150 on the way to the Staminatrix, lots of help from other turfers, so he could take the same zones again and again.
Rymprak from Uppsala decided to go for another medal that can be hard depending on where you live: Revisitor.
"Depending on where you live and turf, it is easier or harder to win certain medals. Taking Revisitor has felt boring and close to impossible as central Uppsala and central Stockholm are my main Turf areas. After more than 5 years of turfing, I have not been able to find the right time.
This round, the medal suddenly felt possible to take. I was going to spend a week at a folk high school in Skurup in southern Skåne, which is a place with low activity and about 60 zones. The first evening I took almost all of the town's 60 zones in just under 30 kms of biking. On the second night, 50 zones were easily taken and the medal appeared i the app. Now I'm happy and satisfied that the medal has been taken and that it's only a medal you take once!"
Personally I still have not taken the Insomnia medal, maybe it will happen this summer or maybe it won't ;) It has been on the to-do-list the last five summers, but other things were prioritized.
Turf Picture of the Month
This months Turf Picture is of the zone Rälsbron taken by Fafng:
If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!
Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!
//Munin
...if you want to contribute to future Turf Insiders, send your story to insider@turfgame.com :) C'mon and share your big and small stories with the Turf world.
Round winners – April 2024 (Round #166)
Congratulations to the winners of round April 2024: pPilot from Scotland took Gold with a large marginal to 0beroff from Stockholm who secured a Silver by biking all over Stockholm, uppuppuppner from Västra Götaland took home his first Bronze.Well done mates!
Upcoming events
If you are organizing an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com a couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into the news letter :)
SCOnanza aka Scottish Turf Open – Saturday June 1st
The Scottish Turf Open Championships is BACK in Edinburgh at the start of June for its second year! Click HERE for more information. This is the second installment of this already legendary event. And HERE is where you sign up for this Event.
You can participate in the event either by bike or foot and be in a team or do the entire Event by yourself. If you want to play in a team but don´t have teammates, write that in the registration formula and the organizer will try to set up a team for you. Note that you have to register since the event is gonna be private when it occurs. But you will be awarded the special Event24 medal.
Sign up and get more details HERE:
You can book a room at Scandic between the 5th and the 10th of june using the code luleturf2424 and get 10% off. You need to book via this e-mail: lulea@scandichotels.com
Göteborg Open, Saturday 6th of July
Why not visit Gothenburg for our annual foot and bike event? Read all about it our website: www.turfgoteborg.se/2024/05/06/turf-gbg-open-2024/
Skåne Open, 24th of August
Participation will give you the event medal. Details will come later this summer but you can sign up already now HERE.
Bonanza 2024 on the 14th of September in Enköping
More news will follow when we get closer to the date! Don't forget to mark the date in your calendar!
World Heritage Zones – part 2
It is the Turf Crew's ambition that all World Heritages on UNESCO's list should have one zone. If UNESCO demotes a world heritage and removes it from the list the attribute should be removed. This happened with the Victorian docs in Liverpool as they lost their historical values due to new developments in the areas. Sometimes we miss when a WH has been removed, feel free to make an issue if you are aware.
We have made WH zones up until the ones approved by UNESCO 2021. There was no World Heritages approved in 2022 (Corona). We will shortly start working on the new ones from 2023. We use the UNESCO web site as an aid when creating the WH zones, click HERE.
Zones are placed within the WH boundary, even if the zone is in grounds where you have to pay, or in places where you could only take the zone with satellite data connection (like Amazonas).
We don’t move them for convenience, only if they are dangerously placed or physically inaccessible or by mistake are outside the actual WH.
You can find all WH zones using third part tools like Lundkvist or UrbanGeeks Turf Map Tool, use the Tag filter.
Last Turf Insider allinug and FeTaTo shared their experiences with visiting WH zones. This time we will hear from allinug again.
”Now that I have returned home after two months of "World Heritage slalom" by train, I am beginning to sum up my impressions: 39 World Heritage sites spread over France, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Belgium and Denmark. There were, of course, some other interesting zones as well, although it was often sparse among them. In Monaco, Andorra and Ireland, I had to do without World Heritage sites, although there are such in the two latter countries. Many of them are cathedrals and other impressive buildings. But the World Heritage site that I appreciated the most during the "second half" of my trip was the natural phenomenon at Giant's Causeway on the north coast of Northern Ireland:
"...an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic fissure eruption. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are hexagonal. The tallest are about 12 metres (39 ft) high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres (92 ft) thick in places. According to legend, the columns are the remains of a causeway built by a giant." (excerpt from Wikipedia)
For those that have missed it, the first stop for Turf statistics, Warded, have had a bit of a make-over and now have a few more Top lists and a new layout. One new Top List is for Revisits, something that gave a new status to a turfer in Turku, Finland.
Revisit Turf God by Petter69
After realizing that one of our local fellow turfers, ojarnstr, had many MANY more Revisits than anybody else I had to catch up with him to understand why. He chose one of his favorite zones, HundbananStep in Pargas for our meeting. By the way, zone HundbananStep is a very nice zone up the 470 steps with a beautiful view over the well known Pargas limestone quarry. HERE you can find more information about Hundbanan, unfortunately only in Swedish and Finnish
BILDAfter climbing up the steps and taking the zone, it was time for some questions.
When and why did you start turfing?
- I started in July 2013after reading an article in the newspapers about Turf. I was a gamer and liked being out in nature, so I thought this would be perfect for me. And I've been playing ever since. I was actually the first player on mainland Finland. Back then it was a different game obviously, with only a few zones to visit. I have never won a round, but round 42 I was no 1 in Finland.
So why do you have so many Revisits?
- Even if we have some legendary and active turfers in my city, like M0112, spagetti, Tagliatelle, Grandi, there have been longer times when I have nearly been alone. So I have not actively tried to be no 1 with Revisits, but I live in a city where it has just happened.
Which zone do you have the most Revisits on?
- That has to be Tummelstenen, closest to where I live and on the way to work. Probably a couple of thousand Revisits on that zone.
How are you going to celebrate when you reach 50.000 Revisits (now 44.000)?
- Ha, I'm not planning on celebrating that, more now aming on reaching 25 million points in total to climb to rank 59.
Have you ever approximated how many points more you would have had without having to take so many Revisists?
- No, but as I normally make one longer Turf bicycle round per day, I normally tend to make some 50k points a week. When other players are active, I make some 100k points a week, so I guess you could estimate something from that if you wanted.
So a couple of rounding off questions at the end, Firstly, if you could change something with Turf, what would it be?
- Well, I think Turf is a great game and great games shouldn't make drastic or big changes, I think this has been perfect with Turf, sometimes something needed adjustments, but no big changes. Now as we talk about revisits, I have suggested shortening the revisit time from 23to let's say 12 hours. Then I wouldn't have to wait until Saturday evening doing my next round on a sunny weekend day, if I had made a round after work on Friday evening.
Lastly, what is your best Turf memory?
- Definitely our ABOA Turf Open last summer, that was great. We had hoped for some 50 participants, but 83 turfers from several countries showed up. It was so nice to meet all turfers in real life.
Keep on turfing!
We hope to read more about the recent updates to Warded and its care takes, if Turf Insider manages to pin him down between his Turf rounds.
"Another regional battle but just three regions and with a twist that appealed to many in Scotland. A week was easier for people to know if they could commit the time and a nice length of time to commit to. The week of madness provided a welcome motivation after a long winter, encouraging us out more, meeting each other and working together. Despite a wet start where we wondered if cloud seeds had been sent from Gbg, the rest of the week was pleasant weather, dry and warm. Many medals and ranks were gained, many personal goals achieved, many kilometres covered. Those who wanted to go crazy went crazy while those who preferred a slower pace did so. There was something for everyone and a lot of fun was had. We enjoyed the 'dash for glory' a few hours before the end of each day, with a few very close endings that required enthusiasm and team effort. 'Many smalls make a big' became the motto and Scotland pulled together, winning the competition. A nice bonus to the rewards of taking part. Thank you to Skåne and VG, and to Turfportalen for developing, supporting and hosting."
- A week is better than a month. Much easier to really make an effort.
- No mid round starts, the pph advantage is too big. 50 000 points/day for doing nothing! That's 3 times more than our average player took.
- Do (Swedish) calendar days 00-24 instead of 12-12. Makes it easier for the people working normal hours to turf in the evening to get a lead or catch up. Now you can only watch from the side and see the other teams gain.
- Overall all we really enjoyed the competition and the team spirit we got. Lots of cheering and having people turf a lot more than they normally do. Especially considering the cold weather we had.
- I thought it would be more exciting with just a week but I missed the tactical planning from one-month competitions.
- A week gives you very little time to compensate for temporary things that impact like bad weather, bike breakdowns or competing activities. At the same time, full speed ahead a full month is too much.
- Even if I'm retired I have competing things to do Monday-Friday, weekends are optimal for turfing. Perhaps have 16 day competitions starting on a Friday ending on a Sunday giving the teams three weekends to turf like hell.
- I would have preferred the same rule as in the Ultimate region fights for the red line, which is based on active turfers in the region.
Many things to consider for upcoming battles. Huge congratulations to the Scottish team!
Turf Picture of the Month
This months Turf Picture is of the zone SpårSpan taken by Fafng.
If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!
Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!
//Munin
...if you want to contribute to future Turf Insiders, send your story to insider@turfgame.com :) C'mon and share your big and small stories with the Turf world.
