This week we are taking a holiday on the island of Arran, staying in the lovely village of Lamlash. Arran doesn't have any tower bells, but Timothy Billings, who comes to the mainland from time to time for tower bell or handbell ringing, has started a handbell group. Yesterday we...

As our target was Surprise Minor, we initially looked at a method we didn’t know at all,  but then decided to switch to Cambridge. To start with the conductor called every place notation.   Even with this aid, we frequently collapsed with errors but gradually rang further. As we got...

I was fortunate enough to find another person who wanted to work with place notation and someone with experience who was willing and had the required patience to guide us. Thank you, Elaine & Hamish!  Progress might have been more rapid if there’d been 2 people with high competence, but...

At this point I decided to re-visit Kent Treble Bob Minor, hoping to use it to improve the skill of rapidly and reliably knowing my bells’ places. I had never previously succeeded in getting the Kent Places secure but other than these, Kent is plain hunt patterns with dodges as...

This was clearly a major element of my barrier and needed work.  In my early days of tower bell ringing, like most, I would count my places, but this skill has long since retired. If I try to do it now, I very quickly lose concentration and forget. Instead, I...

I have learned very many new methods for peals on tower bells and it was so frustrating to find my skills seemed no use in hand.  I considered the skills I use when learning a new method:

• Learn the place bell order.
• Create, then condense a verbal description of the...

I learned the basics of change ringing in hand in the 1970s at university.  Since then, I’ve had a couple of spells of trying to progress further and prior to March 2020 had rung a total of 6 peals (Plain Bob Minor/Major on 1-2 and inside pairs) and 41 quarter...