Thursday practices

Thursday online practices are still going strong!  We generally have between six and eight ringers on board – with ages ranging from a youthful 9 yrs up to a decrepit 71.

Ringing often seems to go better when the aforesaid decrepit tower captain sits on the sidelines and “supervises”, rather than actually ringing a bell!

The online RingingRoom is a different experience from ringing a real bell in a real tower.  A lot of the visual and tactile “clues” are missing.  Not only that, but ringers need to cope with the technology.  As well as the Ringing Room software, we need to run something like Zoom simultaneously so that we can chat as well as ring.  It’s not for everyone!

We are not achieving world-notable performances.  (Last week, a group of far cleverer ringers than us rang the first ever peal on RingingRoom!) but we are thrilled with what we can achieve.

A unique positive of RingingRoom is that it allows ringers from anywhere in the world to join in the ringing, so while six of our normal band are Kildwick-based, one comes from Otley and another all the way from Deepest Wales!  When (and if) these sessions are replaced by normal ringing, Sara from Wales will, again, be cut off from all ringing activity.  That’ll be a sad day.  Till that happens, we’ll soldier on!

A world first?

Probably not…  But I bet you’ve not seen a Yorkshire Tail End that’s less than 70mm long!

For those of you who don’t know, a Yorkshire tail-end has an extra fluffy bit on the end whereas most normal ropes are simply doubled back on themselves.

 

I’m making mini-ropes on my new toy (a ropewalk) and, as we have Yorkshire tails on our bells, I really needed to do this!  If we’re being techie, both the sally and the tail end should be trimmed down a bit more – but at least they are less hairy than they were when we started:  (See the WoolWinder page for a little more)

Update on the ringing

We started with just five.  Our Thursday practices seem to be going well; there is now a regular core of seven of us – and the youngest is doing every bit as well as the oldest! Annoyingly, we’ve not yet scored a full course of Plain Bob but we are tantalisingly close!