LOK held the final event of the 2025 GLOSS series at Harmondsworth Moor on Sunday 20th July 2025, using a new area to orienteering which you may not have realised existed, being surrounded by M25, M4 and Heathrow Airport!
Results, Routegadget and GLOSS Scoring.
The finale of the 2025 GLOSS series was held at another brand new area, Harmondsworth Moor, tucked in between Heathrow Airport and the M25, just south of the M4. Not only did the area offer a unique sound scape but also a super clear A3 sprint / urban style 1:4,000 map to help competitors confidently navigate between the areas partitioned by the River Colne and the Wraysbury Rivers. Aircraft descending towards the airport runway could be glimpsed during the GLOSS course from the higher vantage points adjacent to the M25. And tasty ripe blackberries abounded.
Hosts were LOK. Thanks to Neil Brooks who, in addition to organising permissions from British Airways and their property services firm (CBRE), planned, put out the controls very early on and did the IT. Further thanks are due also to Charles Spence for otherwise handling all the organisational aspects and Ian Marsden (HH) for controlling. We are also grateful to Alistair from CBRE and ranger for the Moor, who ensured that we had exclusive access to our own special car park for this event.
Neil ensured that there was plenty to keep you thinking while making one’s way round the 3.5 km, 80 m climb and 22 controls course. Direct routes across the tickly tall grass, however, were less attractive than they would have been a month ago or so.
Unhandicapped course results are now available on our website as is a link to Routegadget. You can use RouteGadget to show the planner where you went and review others’ routes.
Quickest on the GLOSS course this time was Nick Barrable (M40) of SYO in 23:20, pipping Harold Wyber (M40) of CHIG in 25:19. Harold merits a special mention as he made to all six GLOSSes in the series, being the fastest or second fastest competitor on each occasion. Nick’s time was only slightly longer than the GLOSS expected winning time of 20-22 minutes. Quickest female was Helen Marsden (W45) of HH in 32:15.
For handicapping purposes competitors are awarded points based on how well on the day they outdo their average ranking scores across all British Orienteering (BO) ranking events over the past year instead of their best six. Full details of the handicapping approach is here and the list of average scores for all BO members as at 21 June 2025 is given in the penultimate column here. Unranked competitors are each assumed to perform at 0.95 against expectations.
Quickest on handicap ie the individual whose ratio of actual event points to expected points based on their current ranking was again Danni Angelova (W55) of DFOK in a time of 70:16 minutes with a ratio of 1.206. Five clubs fielded a full team of at least six successful competitors for the handicap competition. DFOK prevailed over HAVOC thanks to a strong showing on handicap with HH third.
HAVOC had already won the 2025 GLOSS series going into the final event, thereby retaining the London Bus Trophy for another year.
Full handicapped results are here. Any scoring queries to Paul Todd at fixtures@londonorienteering.co.uk.
That’s it for this year but see you all again in 2026.
Catherine Galvin – 2025 GLOSS series coordinator (LOK)
Further details of the wider series are available at the GLOSS series page.
