Our Thursday Ringing Room band is making great progress!
Our performances are clearly not up to the standards of all those Clever Ringers out there, but when you combine the average age of the participants (just over 12) – and the fact that half of them have never rung a change in their lives – and that two of them have barely set foot in a ringing chamber of any sort, then it is pretty amazing stuff!
We all know that it is far easier to introduce someone to an activity like bell ringing when there is a competent band around them. These six young people are doing this almost on their own by Distance Learning and, tired as they must be of staring at a screen all day for school work, they still spend an hour a week, tackling the complexities of Bobs and Singles.
They are making great progress though and, to celebrate our menbership of the Western Branch which is holding a Quarter Peal Month, we decided to see what we could achieve.
The headline tally of 240 changes sells the band a bit short – we tried ringing as many touches as possible but, of course, only counted the ones fully completed. We didn’t count the 120 that fell apart in the very last lead! We didn’t count the 60 that died at the second bob with two leads to go.
All in all, we probably rang around half of a quarter peal though, of course, it’s recorded as “240 changes”. But very well done, all of you!