The plan for Monday this week was to practise Fermanagh Surprise Royal, but we were one short because of illness. As Nottinghamshire Delight Major has a similar structure - Cornwall with some wrong hunting inserted into the frontwork - we decided to ring a quarter of it, and managed very well. It was one of those satisfying occasions when we just sat down, rang a good quarter with no false starts, and that was that. I slightly preferred it to Cornwall because it doesn't have as much out-of-step treble bob hunting; I found wrong hunting with one bell while treble bob hunting with the other, easier.

The main hazard in Nottinghamshire, which I expect will also apply to Fermanagh, is wrong hunting for too long or not quite long enough. This can result in bells leaving the frontwork in the wrong order. It only happened a couple of times in our quarter, and I was pleased to be able to quickly correct everyone (including myself!) each time.

While checking Nottinghamshire on CompLib, I noticed that Cornwall's roll-ups on the front are missing. These are 2345s and 5432s in the 4th lead, and 5678s and 8765s in the 6th lead. Instead the 4th lead has 2354s, 3245s, 4532s and 5423s, with similar near misses in the 6th lead. Looking at the 4th lead, we can consider that either 2 and 3, or 4 and 5, are the wrong way round. In that lead, 4 and 5 are 6th and 3rd place bells respectively, so the problem is that these place bells get to the front in the wrong order, in comparison with Cornwall. 3rd place bell doesn't make 3rds and 4ths as 6th place bell runs through. Nothing can be done about that without reverting to Cornwall, but what we can do is think of 2 and 3, which are 4th and 2nd place bells, as being the wrong way round, and swap them by introducing the place notation 1256 instead of 56 when the treble is in 3-4. This produces a method called Lugana (it's a wine region in Italy, I have learned). It has the same number of roll-ups on the front as Cornwall, although not exactly the same ones.

The composition we normally ring for Cornwall is 5 befores followed by 3 homes. Actually we usually start with a home so that 3-4 have more coursing. With that arrangement, the choice of Nottinghamshire or Lugana doesn't make much difference because the only roll-ups are in the 4th lead of the first course. We stuck with Nottinghamshire because I thought it would be easier to ring a dodge in 1-2 than make places. This analysis has made me think, though, that next time we ring Cornwall we should keep the 3 homes at the end and benefit from 3456s and 6543s on the front during the 5 befores.

So now we've had our practice at adding wrong hunting to Cornwall frontwork, and locating the point blows in relation to the position of the treble. I am inclined to go straight for a quarter of Fermanagh next week if we have all five people available.