Back in 2015/16 we rang a series of peals with Mike and Ian, working our way through the right-place methods from the standard 8 surprise major; a couple of years later we rang a peal of Bristol with Mike. As part of this year's campaign to get more people to...
This visit took place in Staffordshire while celebrating the 80th birthday of my dad, Phil Gay, but they do say that the best parts of Derbyshire are in Staffordshire.
The original plan didn't involve handbells at all. I was invited to ring a tower bell peal on dad's bells, which...
Peter King's composition of 23-spliced treble bob major was recently rung on handbells for the first time, having been rung only twice (I think) on tower bells. The band was Jonathan Agg, Lucy Warren, Julian Howes and Alan Reading. Posting in the Bellringers Facebook group, Philip Earis wrote:
The...
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...
Today we gave our refurbished Taylor bells a longer tryout with a good peal of Bristol, arranged at the last minute. It was fairly lucky that we managed to get the band together, as Alex had train problems coming from Dunblane and Julia was nearly flooded off the M74.
So...
I have seen some discussion on Facebook about the fact that 17th December this year is the 65th anniversary of the death of Dorothy L Sayers, author of the classic bellringing-themed mystery "The Nine Tailors". Some people might be planning commemorative ringing. 17th December is a Saturday and the Albany...
Yesterday we rang a quarter of Bristol (Major) because Peter wanted to practise the 3-4 position. Around this time last year, Jonathan asked for a composition in which one of the pairs wouldn't ring the coursing position - he was going to call a quarter in which one of the...
We often discuss rule-based ringing, but what about exception-based ringing?
There are lots of examples. Ipswich is Cambridge with plain hunting at the half lead; Quedgeley is Yorkshire with far-dodge-near in 5-6; New Cambridge is Cambridge with dodge and lead in 6th place bell; Maypole is Bristol with the treble...
After discovering Nottinghamshire Delight as a major method with the key features of Fermanagh, I started thinking about other major methods that have key features of the royal or maximus methods that I'm interested in. There are lots of surprise major methods with Zanussi points at the back, but what...
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...