Wednesday 17/12/2025 - Cheltenham 2025
Our final race of 2025 is a Christmas Lights Special around central Cheltenham, courtesy of Greg Best, and based from his house near Pittville Park, with mince pies and mulled wine to wrap up the league.
NOTE to all MAPRUNNERS. You must be using MapRun v7 to run this course. It is just called MapRun. If you have MapRun6 or MapRunF please remove them and install just plain Maprun.
Entries will open soon and will close at midnight on Tuesday 16th December .
Officials
Organiser: Greg Best Queries? email Greg
Directions and Parking
Parking is on Albert Road and the adjacent roads in the vicinity of Greg's House, no 38 Albert Road. There should be plenty of space, and parking is free for 4 hours
What Three Words: ///copy.agree.bless
Grid Ref: SO955232
The nearest postcode is GL52 2QX.
Greg's house will be easy to spot, as it will be lit up with Christmas lights!
icon to get directions to the course.
The Area
We start and finish outside Greg's house, and head into the town centre to get the best of the Christmas lights.
The going is mostly paved, but with some parkland and unlit areas too.
Timing and Fees
Starts from 18:00 to 18:30,head torches probably essential if only to alert the public to your rapid progress amongst them.
To guarantee a map, you will need to pre-enter via Fabian4: entries will open soon, and will stay open until midnight on Tuesday 16th December. A few extra maps will be available for entry on the day, but don't rely on this, and ideally bring cash, although we do now have an available card reader.
Entry fees: £5 seniors, plus £1 for unaffiliated (to British Orienteering) runners, £2 juniors (no added fee for unaffiliated juniors). Competitors aged under-16 must be accompanied. The fee covers third party liability insurance, a map printed on waterproof paper, and post-run cake!
The course
This is a 60 minute score event using the MapRun app.
The Start and Finish are adjacent to parking.
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Checkpoints 1-10 are worth 10 points.
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Checkpoints 11-20 are worth 20 points.
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Checkpoints 21-30 are worth 30 points.
Score as many points as you can in 60 minutes. If you’re late getting back, there’s a 10 point penalty per minute over.
You'll be issued with a waterproof map, A4, scale 1:10,000, before you start.
Please make sure you’ve installed MapRun before the event. If installing MapRun for the first time, select the MapRun app from your app store, and not MapRunF or MapRun6. MapRun, which is in practise Maprun v7, is now the standard app. If you haven’t used MapRun before, don’t worry – it’s easy to use, and we have full details on getting started.
You should download the course to your phone ideally before coming to the event, as sometimes there is little or no phone signal once there.
Links to enable download will appear here when the course is published, typically a week or two before race day.
MapRunG (Garmin) and MapRunA (Apple) users: you do not need the event PIN number to download the course to your watch. This means you can download the course before your arrive at the event, in case there is no phone signal there.
Safety
A head torch is really essential, though there is street lighting over much of the area.
Under 16s must be accompanied accompanied.
Apart from traffic in the busy area around Cheltenham town centre, it's likely that there will be plenty of pedestrians around as well; you need to take particular care when passing people, and emerging from narrow streets and alleys etc.
A first aid kit will be available at registration.
Orienteering is an adventure sport, and you are responsible for your own safety.