Another Bob Minor milestone

I have spent much of this year trying to achieve some level of competence at ringing Plain Bob Minor. I achieved a major milestone by completing a Quarter Peal (recorded on Campanophile) in a time of 40 minutes.

It takes six people to ring Bob Minor and I could not have done it without the kind assistance of five people willing to give up their time to help me ring this for the first time. This is the third time this year that I have rung a Quarter Peal, each of which was a first of a kind for me, and I think that the willingness of people to help others progress is one of the aspects of ringing that I appreciate the most.

I now need to decide what to try and learn next. I am hopeful that I will be able to speed up the rate at which I can learn new things so will attempt to tackle three things in parallel. (1) Consolidate Grandsire Doubles, hopefully this should not prove too difficult of take very long. (2) Learn Grandsire Triples, a more challenging goal since it is rung on 8 bells. (3) Learn another Doubles method, I'm leaning towards Stedman Doubles since it widely rung around here.

A Plain Bob Minor milestone

For the last 6 month's I have been trying to get to grips with a new ringing method, Plain Bob Minor. I thought it would be a relatively straightforward exercise to build on Plain Bob Doubles and to an extent this proved to be the case. However, there proved to be additional, unanticipated, challenges. One extra working bell doesn't sound like much but going from 4 to 5 is a 25% increase. No Tenor to lead off, another challenge. The dodges are all with different bells. Singles as well as bobs.

During the last couple of weeks I have managed a number of touches of Bob Minor but always felt a sense of relief when arriving at the end. On Thursday 9th July I feel that I finally got over the hump, I rang a touch where everything went smoothly and when "that's all" was called I felt a sense of disappointment rather than relief. I was really enjoying myself!

First Quarter Peal "inside"

Mayday sees a milestone in my bellringing pursuit, for the first time I rang inside for a Quarter Peal. The achievement is already posted on Campanophile but I want to thank the five who rang with me and helping me achieve my first.

It was quite an experience and I was not at all sure that I would be able to ring the 1260 changes without any mistakes. I must have been nervous because the evening did not get of to a very auspicious start, I started to ring up without first having made any coils! After exactly 42 minutes we finished. That works out at exactly one change every two seconds. I wouldn't say that the time flew, but it did seem to pass more quickly than when I rang my first ever Quarter Peal on the treble though this too took 42 minutes.

When we had rung the bells back down again we adjourned to the Brandy Cask for a celebratory drink.