The Website for the St. Nicholas Hurst Bell Ringers
We started the evening ringing up and then ringing rounds and call changes. We rang the second half of 60 on thirds.
During the evening we rang Whitfield, Cloister, and another training method invented by Graham which was named “Again” as in “Go again!”.
We then rang the back six down in peal.
Attending were Graham, Sue, Duncan, Louise, Stephanie, Jeremy, Keith and Simon.
We were a little low on numbers this week as various people were away or committed to other things. Initially it looked like there would only be 4 of us: Graham, Keith, Duncan and Sue. But Stephanie turned up just as we were about to start ringing as her commitment at Cantley Park had been cancelled due to bad weather.
We attempted to ring plain hunt on 4 with a cover, which didn’t go too well but improved as we went along. We then switched to ringing call changes on the 3, 4, 6, 7 & 8 bells. This particular choice of bells was chosen as it makes up a major pentatonic scale which sounds good in pretty much any combination.
We then rang down the front 3 in peal (sort of), followed by some rounds on the back 5, and an attempt to ring them down in peal.
Today the tower was visited by some of the attendees of the Bradfield Ringing Course. None of the local band were in attendance except to open up the tower for them, and to lock up afterwards. The local village Horticultural show was in full swing down the hill at the village halls, and several people commented on how lovely the bells sounded.
We had a busy evening starting with attempting to ring up in peal on 6 bells (as Rachel was available to ring up). We then practised call changes on 6, with some of “60 on 3rds”. We then did some plain rounds to give Louise some practice. After we attempted Cloister a few times interspersed with more rounds. We rang Whitefield and more rounds and then attempted to ring down in peal. Attending this evening were Graham, Vinni, Stephanie, Louise, Rachel, Duncan and Keith.
We started the session attempting to ring up in peal followed by call changes with Stephanie, Duncan, Keith and Wendy taking turns to lead the band.
In between each touch of changes, the band rang Whitefield with Stephanie, Keith, Duncan and Wendy taking turns on the treble to practice plain hunting.
Good turnout from the team this Sunday meant we were able to make very good use of a welcome visitor to ring all 8 bells for 11 o’clock service.
Jez joined us from Cambridgeshire, strengthening the band to enable us to give St Helens Doubles a spin, and to ring some respectable rounds and call-changes on the 8.
Duncan, Graham, Keith, Jeremy, Steph, Sue & Wendy.
This evening we did a short session using Abel with Graham, Keith and Stephanie.
We started practicing plain hunting with Stephanie hunting on 7 and Keith on 5.
Then Graham rang a touch of Kent Treble Bob Major practicing treble bob hunting.
Stephanie and Keith then did some more practice plain hunting.
We started the evening a little light with only 4 of us (Graham, Wendy, Stephanie and Keith) as others were running late, so we began by attempting to ring up the front 4 bells in peal, followed by practising plain hunt on 4.
When Duncan and Vinni arrived, we rang up the 5th and 6th and did some kaleidoscope ringing include Mexican Wave in places and “Dodgy” Mexican Wave.
Finally we took turns with a practice method called “Whitefield” where the treble hunts, the 3 makes 3rd and 4th places, and the 5 and 6 cover.
At the end of the session we rang the 6 bells down in peal and moved to The Castle for a debrief.
Most of the band were unavailable this week, so a few of us met up for some practice on the simulator.
We started of with Keith and Stephanie practicing their leading on 6. We’ve previously done a fair bit of practice covering both with the simulator and with real ringers, so leading practice was a useful exercise.
Graham then rang a touch (3 leads) of Bristol Surprise Maximus.
The Keith and Stephanie had a few attempts at leading to Plain Bob Minor, to improve their hunting and listening skills.
We then tried ringing the 3 muffled bells (2,3 and 4) in rounds on 6 with Abel ringing the other 3 bells. This worked quite well, so we attempted to get Abel conducting some call changes. This didn’t work very well, primarily because we couldn’t hear the change announcements properly over the bells on the laptop speakers. We agreed we probably need to put some better speakers for this.
Then Graham had another attempt at Bristol Surprise Maximus followed by Keith and Stephanie trying out covering on 10 bells.
It was an interesting and useful practice session which ended, as usual, with a debrief at The Castle Inn across the road.
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