Learning the Ropes at Youth Summer Camp

St Martin’s Guild held the first ever Summer Camp in Birmingham this year. The teachers were all ITTS trained and successfully used the Learning the Ropes progressive learning scheme.

An article by the organiser Arthur Reeve is available on the Ringing Foundation website and below is an article written by Edward, who was a 14 year old participant.

On the Sunday night before the Saint Martin’s Guild bell ringing course I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I had gone to the bell ringing taster at Saint Philip’s Cathedral a couple of months earlier but that had been quite a long time ago. I arrived at Saint Paul’s at about nine o’clock for the start of the course and was met by some of the instructors, all looking cheerful and ready to get started. We all had a great time, quite literally learning the ropes of bell ringing.

We first started out with just a little bit of chiming when the bell was in the down position. On the same day we began to do back strokes while the instructors did the hand stroke. We also learned on that day how to do the Plain Hunt on hand bells. We began as having each change called “big change” where everyone would swap with the person next to them, and “little change” where the two bells on either end would stay put and the people in the middle would swap with the person next to them again.

By the third day we were all ringing both strokes alone. Then we started perfecting the stroke and starting to practice following other bells, which was extremely hard at first but by the end of the week we would all be attempting rounds on eight.

On the final two days we went out of Birmingham to ring at some other churches. The first day we started off by going to Worcester Cathedral and practicing on the dumbbells which were amazing – I really enjoyed it there. Then we went to another church in Worcester called Old Saint Martin’s. The bells there were the lightest that we had rung that week, so it took a little bit of time to adjust. After that we went bowling for some fun.

On the last day we went first to a church in Hanbury, where the bells were very nice and we rang lots of rounds and a few call changes. In the afternoon we went to a church called Saint Augustine’s in Dodderhill. There we did pretty much the same thing as we did in Hanbury.

Overall I really enjoyed the course and I learned a lot and I’d like to thank all the instructors for making it such a great and memorable week. I now hope to attend some practices at Northfield church.

Edward, Summer Camp participant aged 14