Ringers Visit the REC and Silent Practice Means Exactly that! And a New Recruit Tries her Hand at Ringing.

A sunny spring afternoon and seven Great Gransden ringers visited Stretham (Cambs) to ring at the Recruitment and Education Centre, or REC for short.

Kindly hosted by the REC management team we spent two hours practising our Plain Hunt, Plain Bob and Grandsire Doubles, in a dedicated session aided by volunteer ringers from other towers to support our endeavours. The half time tea break included some special cake! which refreshed us for the next ringing session.

It was really nice to have the opportunity to ring on different bells, lighter than ours, and to appreciate the different handling qualities. Our thanks to Dee Smith, the REC manager, and Lousie Dobson, the REC administrator for making the ringing arrangements and to the several ringing helpers who assisted our “improvers” and added stability to the ringing, making our afternoon most enjoyable and successful.

Silent Bells

Preparation for our visit to the REC has been the weekly tied bell/sim practices on a Wednesday when we silence the bells and use the simulated sound. The laptop PC which drives Abel and into which the sim is plugged, has failed. So the for the last two weeks we have had no sound at all and have had to “mime”. Nevertheless, we have still been able to practice dodging and general bell control.

A visit to the PC doctor confirmed that the laptop could not be repaired and plans were afoot to replace it with a “new” scond hand one. Then up steps Christine who has offered one of her old ones which she is getting rid of. It is hoped that after Easter she will be able to clean the machine and let us trial it to see if it will be fit for purpose. In the meantime we’ll borrow another one, and having purchased a serial port adapter we hope to be up and running in time for next Wednesday’s practice.

New Recruit

Although there are nine of us who regularly ring we always need new recruits. Not everyone can be there all the time so enough ringers are needed so that we can always ring all six bells,

The periodic email to Touchbase went out in early March and it was thought, as usual, that no-one would come forward. Then, out of the blue, Mirjam (Miriam) contacted me to say that she was very interested and could she find out more. She joined us for our practice on Thursday 17th March and, full of enthusiasm came back the following Wednesday for her first lesson in bell handling. Result!!