This evening we almost rang a quarter of Fermanagh, unfortunately scuppered by a hardware problem, and infuriatingly in my equipment.
We had a short false start because one of my bells just stopped ringing. Unplugging and replugging the eBell, followed by restarting Handbell Manager, got it working again. It would...
Gareth asked for ideas for surprise royal methods to ring with the Five O'Clock Club, so I suggested Walsworth and Fermanagh. Walsworth is Sgurr A'Chaorachain with a block of wrong hunting as the frontwork, and I included it in a set of methods that I wrote about recently. I...
I'm taking a holiday this week, so I booked myself up for lots of online handbell ringing. (Ringers in England have been taking advantage of the recent relaxation of lockdown to restart live outdoor handbell ringing, but we still can't get our band together because in Scotland we are not...
This week I went a bit mad with Ringing Room quarters, and had five attempts. Only one was successful though, which was Zanussi on Friday evening. In the Five O'Clock Club I have been mainly signing up for 10- and 12-bell quarters, which tends to reduce the success rate, but...
The winning streak came to an end, of course - we lost a quarter of York Maximus, which I might write about another time. But this evening we succeeded first time with Iddesleigh, which is one of the methods I wrote about last week. At the weekend I also...
After ringing a quarter of Sgurr a'Chaorachain yesterday, a new range of surprise royal methods begin to seem possible. They have a common style, with a simple rule-based backwork and a large region of regular frontwork. The gaps are filled in with a few "twiddly bits" at the interface between...
I rang a satisfying quarter of Sgurr a'Chaorachain this evening, with the Five o'Clock Club, scored at the first attempt. We did well with no major difficulties. It's a lovely method, very musical with lots of back-bell runs on the front. And it has so many landmarks that it holds together...
Sgurr a'Chaorachain Surprise Royal is basically a ten-bell version of Zanussi Surprise Maximus. It has gained some popularity in recent years and we have had some success ringing in in the tower at Scottish Association practices. It has just appeared on the menu for the Five o'Clock Handbell Club, at...
Sometimes described as "poor man's Bristol Royal", Littleport extends Bristol Major to Royal by turning the treble around in 8th place, maintaining the pattern of points and fishtails at the back, and filling in with triples dodge above the treble across the half lead. The same idea works for maximus...
I've just rung a quarter of 3-spliced surprise royal (Cambridge, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire) which contained a "big bob" - that is, a 6ths place bob. This is a fairly common idea for surprise maximus (there it would be an 8ths place bob), especially in methods with Cambridge place bell order...