On Saturday 10th October, we had a well-attended practice at two six-bell towers near Sherborne. Everyone managed to navigate the staircase and trapdoor at Leigh and our ringing entertained the people who were decorating the church for Harvest Festival. They were pleased to see lots of young people ringing the bells and asked if they could put something about it on the village Facebook page.
We were ready for cake by the time we arrived at Longburton and, as usual, we were not disappointed, as several people had been busy baking. We then made good use of the bells while family members browsed the extensive second-hand book stall.
During the afternoon we rang rounds, call changes, plain hunt on five, Plain Bob Doubles and Grandsire Doubles. It was good to see several young ringers calling call changes, Esther calling Grandsire Doubles for the first time and Daniel calling Plain Bob and Grandsire and leading down in peal.
Many thanks to Jan Keohane and Helen Pharoah for making the arrangements and for welcoming us.
This time, the young ringers who attended were from the Devizes, East Dorset and West Dorset branches. We sometimes have people from the Dorchester and Salisbury branches come along too. It would be good to see more young ringers from elsewhere. The guild is large, but we do try to locate practices reasonably centrally – or at least rotate them around so that the same people don’t have to travel a long distance every time. Please do encourage any young ringers you know to join us! The next practices will be on 21st November and 5th December and details will be on the calendar on the guild website.
Hilary Child
