Last weekend was an intensive ringing weekend, although not quite as intensive as originally planned. It all started with an invitation to attempt Cyclic Six Maximus on handbells as part of a weekend of peals celebrating the 25th anniversary of the first performance of David Pipe's classic composition. That was going to be at the famous handbell address of 19 The Green, Romanby, Northallerton - Jennie and David Town's house. The plan for the weekend evolved to include first a tower bell peal of Cyclic Six on Saturday at Stockton, and then a Friday evening handbell peal of Cambridge Royal in Northallerton.

Things turned out a bit differently. First the handbell peal of Cyclic Six evaporated, for reasons that I won't go into. Next the Friday evening peal was changed to Bristol Major because illness removed a member of the band. We rang a very good peal with only about half a dozen trips in total. As it was relatively short notice I called the Roger Bailey composition instead of revising the Mark Davies composition. We also rang a good peal in the tower on Saturday, but the difficulty was getting from Penrith (I stayed at Julia's after the Friday evening peal) to Stockton through the snow.

It would be good to go and ring handbells in Northallerton again, especially if I can combine it with something else. It's quite a journey, but more practical than going to Reading. In any case we want to organise a handbell Cyclic Six with a northern band - I really did a lot of practice in advance of this weekend and I don't want to waste it. Watch this space!

Cornwall

We often discuss rule-based ringing, but what about exception-based ringing?

There are lots of examples. Ipswich is Cambridge with plain hunting at the half lead; Quedgeley is Yorkshire with far-dodge-near in 5-6; New Cambridge is Cambridge with dodge and lead in 6th place bell; Maypole is Bristol with the treble...

Back in the days of ringing with Roger Bailey at Imperial College in the early 1990s, it frequently happened that handbell ringers visiting London would contact Roger and ask whether he could organise a peal for them. He was always happy to oblige. I have had it in mind for...

ZanussiSgurr a' ChaorachainMadurai

After discovering Nottinghamshire Delight as a major method with the key features of Fermanagh, I started thinking about other major methods that have key features of the royal or maximus methods that I'm interested in. There are lots of surprise major methods with Zanussi points at the back, but what...

Handbell day went well, with a few quarter peal successes and a range of useful practice sessions. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. We had mixed results with the Top and Up. Jonathan's group managed to ring the whole touch of spliced maximus, while the other groups got as far as...

Buckfastleigh

This is about methods in general rather than handbell ringing, but I came to it while pondering Buckfastleigh as a possible method to ring next time we find ourselves with only four people. It's one of the methods from Chandler's 23-spliced, but isn't rung very often by itself. I've never...

It's been a while, but now I can get back to writing about ringing, instead of writing about writing about ringing. First, though, let me report that we went to the Ringing Roadshow and sold nearly all of the books that we took. There were also quite a few sales...