Yesterday we rang a good peal of Bristol with Estella Haynes and Jack Page. I had been planning to get Estella to come over from Edinburgh for a peal, and then it turned out that yesterday she was working in Glasgow for the day and also Jack is visiting for the week. One of the most easily organised peals ever!

Since January, when Nick Jones rang a peal with several people who had not previously rung an SACR handbell peal, I have been thinking that it would be good to increase the number of people ringing SACR handbell peals during the year. The previous record was 13, achieved in 2015 and also last year. We quickly reached 13 in the first few months of this year, and yesterday took the total to 15 with the addition of Estella and Jack. That's even without Angela and Julia, who haven't rung handbell peals for the association this year yet, and we have a couple of attempts scheduled with Mike, plus further plans with other people, so we should get to a much bigger total by the end of the year.

The other significance of 15 is that we have now rung 15 peals of Bristol Major for the SACR, making it the leading surprise major method on handbells ahead of Yorkshire with 14. Plain Bob Major (24) and Plain Bob Minor (16) are still ahead for overall methods though.