Kildwick Ringers

The Kildwick Ringers’ website has moved from one server to another.  I hope that no one will really notice the difference – but my bank balance will benefit from the lower costs!

Now to sort out the emails…

As the church is holding an All Souls Day service this evening, there will be NO PRACTICE tonight.

From 5th October, we will be holding our practices from 7:00-8:30pm instead of
half an hour later.  It seemed to work well tonight, so that will continue for now.

But…

No practice next week!

The ringers are all going to a party next Thursday, so there will be no practice on 12th October.  Sorry!

The bells will ring on the morning of Saturday 14th when we are pleased to host members of the Yorkshire Association Training Course for one of their practical sessions.

Stays are the one part of a bell that are designed to break!  They are there to rest the bell when it is perched upside down and ready to ring – but they mustn’t be so strong that they would let anything more expensive break if the ringer pulls too hard.

They do say that, if a learner breaks a stay, it is the teacher/supervisor’s fault.  Last night, a stay was broken.  It was a learner.  I was the teacher.  But I want to ditch that word, “fault”. Stays are designed to break.  Last night, it all worked exactly as designed and, though it is a right pain to have to go out, make  a new one and refit it (especially in today’s weather!), that is how the system should work.

Bad luck, ****** (name suppressed to avoid shame!) – but that’s what happens.  You’ve learned something new!

We’ve had some quite busy days recently.

For the Western Branch Quarter Peal Day, two of our ringers took part in a significant performance when 14 year-old George very ably conducted his first quarter peal.  It was a relatively simple composition of Plain Bob Doubles (… but then all compositions of Bob Doubles are relatively simple!) but he called it confidently and correctly.  No one could ask for more!

We heard that morning that he has been chosen to call the changes for the Tykes entry into the Ringing World National Youth Contest that is to be held in York in early July.

At the beginning end of the scale, we have a number of new learners, just getting to grips with all of these flying ropes.  We have big hopes of good things to come.

When a number of folk are missing, it often makes for a rather “thin” practice.

On Thusday, there were just five of us – but that meant we could do some quite heavy-duty touches of Bob Doubles for George.

A bit awkward, with no cover bell, but that was good practice in itself. By the end of an evening of quite hard work, George was ringing touches “unaffected” as well as one where he made the bob.  And he was ringing them confidently!  Just the running in and out to do now!

Not only that, but there was some pretty impressive treble-ringing too.

It’s great to be back in the tower again!  We are limited to six ringers – but the very features that people tell us are the downsides of Kildwick tower (a door opening directly outside; a draught howling through the ringing chamber; a ceiling somewhere up there in the cloudbase) are just the features that make ringing in these Covid-ridden times more possible.

With our ground floor ring, we need not limit the numbers;  six in the tower, ringing – and any others, sitting in the churchyard, listening.

And we’re doing well, too.  We’re all a bit rusty after a long lay-off.  It’s also salutary to realise that, when you ring regularly,  your hands do toughen up a bit and muscles do build up.  There’s nothing to notice at the time – but you do realise you’ve missed it when starting again!

Well… we arrived and rang.  We were always going to be in what could kindly be termed, the “Foundation Places” – and so we were.  In the company of a load of seasoned experts, it couldn’t be otherwise.

But our MiniRingers still did brilliantly!  They held up their end in fine style – they rang as well as I’ve seen them ring and in no way were they “a miserable bottom”.  We listened to recordings of the four finallists and several folk said, “you were better than that!”

There were 16 bands in two heats – a total of 96 ringers.  If others did as we did and had a separate caller, then we may have cracked the 100 tally.  We couldn’t, sadly, hear the other bands.  Technology didn’t allow that.  The communal chat room was encouraging and there were several plaudits from others – and there was an invitation to the MiniRingers to join the Brumdingers – another young people’s band – in a joint practice.  We did that – and had a wonderful time, ringing for some of the time on 16 bells!

We are truly beginning to spread our wings…