The first composition is one I learnt from Roger Bailey and have called a couple of times. It's based on blocks of five befores, in coursing orders with both 3-4 and 5-6 coursing. For example, starting from the coursing order 54326, a block of five befores generates the coursing orders...

I've written before about handbell-friendly compositions, but now I'm going to start an occasional series about compositions that I like for particular methods. First up is Plain Bob Major, which is the most common eight-bell method for handbell peals and a natural choice for a band starting out on peal-ringing. The...

You know the rest...

Last week we reached a point of conflicting projects.

• The 23-spliced project, which was originally supposed to follow our success with 8-spliced last summer.
• The Horton's Four project, which we embarked on after ringing it in the tower in December.

We have had some success...

Regular observers of the goings-on at 1 Albany Quadrant might have noticed that we have been working on Horton's Four (London, Bristol, Glasgow and Belfast), following a successful peal in the tower in December. From seeming impossible at first, it is gradually starting to feel more manageable, although we still find...

After ringing a quarter of Bristol on the handbell day, we hatched a plan for Julia to come up from Penrith to ring a peal. It was the half term holiday down there (a week later than ours), so she was able to bring her daughters for an overnight trip. We gave...

This week we tried something new, with a quarter of cyclic spliced Kent and Oxford. "Cyclic" refers to a 7-part composition in which the part ends are 12345678, 13456782, 14567823, 15678234, 16782345, 17823456, 18234567. Cyclic spliced has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially in Maximus and usually with...

We have been working on our current project, a peal of 8-spliced, for a while. We rang our first quarter in November 2012, and since then we've rung several more quarters, and lost a peal a few times. We find it difficult to get together for peal attempts, so we...

Last week started well on Sunday with a quarter of Primrose in the tower, and continued well on Monday with a date touch of 8-spliced. The date touch was a textbook operation: we sat down, started ringing, continued until the end, and stopped. Some of the leads of London...

Well, maybe not. But in our continuing 8-spliced project, we decided that these are the methods we need more practice at, so we rang them in a quarter with a nice palindromic six-part composition:

1344 Spliced Surprise Major (4m)
Simon J Gay
   2345678
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S  5738264
P- 7864523
B- 6784523...