On Monday 15th May Bicester hosted the May Special practice. The nominated methods were Little Bob Minor and Grandsire Triples. 11 branch ringers attended making it quite an interesting practice.
First we rang up the back 6 (hoping we would get enough to ring triples) and then we rang up the front 4.
We rang plain courses of Grandsire Doubles for Helen before trying the first of the nominated methods – Little Bob Minor – we managed two plain courses without any trouble 🙂
A few more ringers arrived making it posible to ring 8 bells so we rang plain hunt on 7 and then 8. Feeling we had a good chance of managing it, we attempted plain courses of Grandsire Triples – and managed two courses successfully.
At this point I thought we could actually manage even more advanced ringing, but before we tried that Simon and Amanda arrived making us 11. Whilst they caught their breath from the climb up the tower we rang a touch of Grandsire Doubles with Helen half-hunt and Jeremy calling, again successfully .. nothing was going to stop us it seems 🙂
Time for the 10! We rang plain hunt on 9..shaky at first and then the striking improved as we rang more courses.
Time to push out the boat .. Plain Bob Major.. a few nervous faces and one jibe about bets on how far we would would get.. we only had time for one attempt before Steve had to head off to work, but that was all we needed 🙂 All the way through (with a few pointers) and a very pleased band!
We had time for some more plain hunt on 7 and 8 before ringing the back 8 down in peal (rather well struck too!)
An excellent last special practice for Sarah and I, but we still have one more branch event before we move north of the border. Hopefully see some of you at the practice at Middleton Stoney on Wed 7th June.
Anthony Cole