We started with practicing ring up in peal, followed by a brief attempt to do plain hunt on 3 bells before Vinni and Simon joined us. We then rang rounds and call changes and some Mexican Wave.

To give Jeremy and Duncan some practice moving around in a more complex method, we then practised Whitefield. In this training method, Simon and Vinni (on the 1 and 4 bells) plain hunted whilst Duncan (on the 2 bell) made places to firsts position and back, and Jeremy (on the 3 bell) made places to fourths position and back. Keith covered on the 5 bell to give Duncan a common reference when he was leading.

Keith then did some hunting from the treble to a more complex method.

We then finished by attempting “Dodgy places Mexican Wave”. This is a variation on Mexican Wave where each pair of bells dodges before and after making places. As this was a complex and unfamiliar exercise Graham, wisely, decided to do the exercise on each pair of bells individually, allowing the band to settle back into rounds before calling the next pair of bells.

We then rang the bells down in peal and went to The Castle for a well-earned drink.

The 3 bell was muffled and the 4 tied. Louise rang up the 3 under instruction from Graham, and Keith rang up the 4. Louise and Keith then both practiced ringing in rounds to improve striking and bell handling. Louise significantly improved her scores from previous sessions.

Keith then practiced Plain Hunting on 5 bells from both the treble and from the 5 bell, whilst Louise continued to practice rounds and work on her technique.

We also had the opportunity to review the bell recordings which Keith previous made, loaded into Abel. It was agreed that they probably sounded a bit shrill.

Keith rang up the 6th and then we did some rounds and simple call changes with Louise to introduce her to call changes, and to give the rest of the band some practice on call changes.

Keith and Stephanie then attempted some treble dodging on 4 bells, with Sue and Vinni on the other two and Graham giving guidance.

We then did some more rounds and call changes followed by Graham, Sue, Vinnie, Jeremy, Stephanie and Keith practicing Mexican Wave on 6 bells, which went very well.

Before we finished we tried the treble dodging again, before practicing ringing down in peal and heading off to The Castle with everyone looking forward to a well-earned drink.

Soon after this we were joined by Jeremy, Vinni, and Rachel. We rang some rounds, mainly for the benefit of Louise, our relative beginner, but also to develop listening and improve striking amongst the rest of the band. Louise is improving rapidly and is close to the point where she can take part in call changes, which she is looking forward to.

We also practiced some call changes as the band felt we hadn’t done that for a while and were a bit rusty, particularly Jeremy who had missed a lot of the practice sessions due to other commitments.

We then rang some Plain Bob Major, with Graham, Vinni, Sue and Rachel on the inside bells with Keith covering and Stephanie on the treble. This was a great exercise as Rachel was keen to practice Plain Bob Doubles, and it gave Stephanie a chance to exercise her hunting skills on a more complex method.

We rang more rounds and call changes later in the evening, and another attempt at Plain Bob Doubles. Then Keith practiced Plain Hunt on 5, although Graham and Vinni cheekily started to mix up the 4 and 5 bells.

Then we rang down and headed to The Castle.

We also had the opportunity to review the CCTV camera as some of the band, particularly Graham the Tower Captain, hadn’t seen it working. This is still in the temporary position, although it does give a fairly good view of the 3 and 4 bells.

We got a chance to check out whether the CCTV camera position was suitable and how well the night vision worked. It all seemed very satisfactory, so now we need to experiment with mounting positions and to make the installation more permanent.

We attempted to ring up in peal followed by rounds practice, primarily for Louise (although it’s good practice for all of us). We then made a few attempts at plain hunting, which didn’t go that well with two learners trying to hunt at the same time. We then did some more rounds and decided to cut the practice a bit short as everyone was feeling tired, so we finished by an attempt to ring down the bells in peal which wasn’t perfect, but is improving.

Afterwards Louise practiced rounds on the simulator, and Graham had a go at a 12 bell method.

It was a useful session and we ended with a debrief at The Castle.

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.