M2C: 17 Nov 2018 - Piddlehinton

Early on Saturday 17^th November 2018 a group of twelve of us, led by Tutor Roger Booth, found ourselves eagerly meeting at St Mary’s Piddlehinton to discover more about teaching from Plain Hunt to Plain Bob. Introductions out of the way we walked from the village hall to the tower to experience the challenges of bell control skills at both hand or backstroke, lengthening or shortening ropes whilst ringing, plus some detailed Powerpoint presentations describing some of the ways forward in teaching a band to progress into method ringing within their towers and thus the tone of the day became established.

During a well-earned coffee break, thanks to Nigel, ringers from London, Somerset, East Dorset and the Dorchester area were able to mingle and get to chat with one another about various scenarios in their own towers. We then headed back to the church to try out Mexican Wave, Bistow Doubles and Churchyard Bob. Most were new to us but we enjoyed the challenge of ringing these whilst the ‘novice’ experienced plain hunting and place counting.

Unwrapping the mysteries of the complex range of opportunities with advanced kaleidoscope ringing followed with 2 and 3 making long places and 4 and 5 doing the Stedman back work. Just to show how Kaleidoscope can be used to focus on specific work or skills!

Following a delicious lunch at The Thimble, a short walk or even shorter drive from the church, we all sauntered back to the hall for some slides on how to move from Plain Hunt into Plain Bob. This was followed back in the tower by Penultimate and Bayles Doubles just to keep us all on our toes!

Apart from making new friends, the day enabled us to extol virtues of the fact that ART is becoming a well-recognised and successful way of teaching and encouraging new ringers into our towers.

Thanks to Roger for allowing this to happen, and for leaving us with a feeling of “we now have the knowledge to go on and teach these skills”. As a result of the course, ART teachers in the Dorset area are combining to work with some of the smaller village churches to run Saturday morning training sessions on ‘From Rounds into Plain Hunt’ and’ ‘Plain Hunt into Bob Doubles’.

Jane Pridmore

Teaching Elementary Change Ringing

Learn how to teach the skills of change ringing.

» Find out more about Module 2C