On Monday 16th May 10 ringers (6 Bicester, 1 Islip and 3 Oxford City ringers) attended the special practice at Bicester. On the agenda (if we had enough capable ringers) were Little Bob Minor and Grandsire Triples. Also at the back of my mind, given we have a 10 bell wedding on Saturday, I was hoping to get enough ringers to do some practice on 10.
At a little before 8pm we were still only 5, but headed up the tower anyway to ring. As we were about to ring up the doorbell went and 3 visitors from Oxford City were asking to be let it. I headed downstairs whilst 4 bells were rung up (3-6). Once upstairs again we rang up the back 4 and then tackled our first nominated method of the evening – Grandsire Triples. A shaky start, but on the second attempt we succeeded and rang two courses in the end – some smiles on our faces resulted – it’s been a while since we rang that at Bicester – well done Ian for getting through without mishap for first time in a couple of years.
Two more arrived so we rang up the trebles and then proceeded to practice call changes on 10.. not too bad.
I then proposed we try Little Bob Minor. The first band got through a couple of courses with a few wobbles, and the second band managed three courses – very good, and excellent attempts by Ian & Simon who hadn’t rung it before.
Given we had 10 bells I thought we ought to push ourselves further so plain hunt on 9 (caters!) was called. The first time through was a little rough, but it settled and by the end we were ringing it with good striking – excellent first ever attempt by Amanda and smiles all around as we haven’t done that for a very long time!
After dropping the trebles we rang down the back 8 in peal – pretty well struck and nice rounds to catch at the end.
All in all a great practice with some (rare) advanced ringing – if only all practices were like that! (Not that I am belittling less advanced methods – just a while since we’ve rung the more advanced stuff).
Next event is the branch practice at Middleton Stoney on Wed 1st June. Do please come along if you can.
Anthony Cole