With Christmas behind us we are back in the tower for our normal weekly practices and will soon be looking forward to the spring and new ringing challenges. The year has already started well with Tricia ringing her first quarter peal. This was on Monday the 6th January when we decided to hop over the border to Potton in Bedfordshire, and nice little 8cwt ring. Tricia rang the tenor to Plain Bob Doubles. Josh rang the treble and it was only his third quarter peal, so it was useful all round experience for both of them. Help from Elinor and Tom made up the band.
Tricia needs to ring one more quarter peal, this time on the treble, to gain her level 3 trainibng certificate in the Learning the Ropes scheme.
Our first Wednesday tied bell practice on the 8th was the traditional theory session held in the warm at Nutbells. The subject was “Why do we call bobs?” A rather detailed explanation was given which confused everyone, but there were some good points coming out of it and at least we enjoyed coffee and biscuits. The trainer has learned his lesson!
The second tied bell practice was the more conventional one in the tower when we focussed successfully on plain courses of Plain Bob Doubles. We will continue on this line which not only helps ‘inside’ ringers, but those learning the treble too. I think we will make good progress this year.
Our first Thursday practice last week was very successful. We rang Plain Bob, Grandsire and St Martins. We will continue to work on these methods, but we usually make a very good job of call changes too, as demonstrated this Sunday the 19th for service ringing, with thanks to Elinor for coming from ‘out of town’ so that we could ring all six whilst others are away.
We have a couple of important events this year. The first is on the 18th March when we are hosting the Huntingdon District for their meeting in the afternoon. We are also preparing tea for the ringers which will be taken in the Reading Room.
2025 sees the 80th anniversary of VE Day and VJ Day and ringers throughout the country have been asked to mark those occasions with ringing and I’m sure that we will join in. The dates are Thursday the 8th May and Friday the 15th August. Perhaps we can recruit new ringers to come and chime the bells, or maybe we could ring some quarter peals?
The Huntingdon District is arranging another ringing festival, this time on Saturday the 21st June. Details are yet to be announced but I hope we can take part and be successful again ringing call changes, as we were last year.
We always look forward to our tower outings and we will soon be looking at the calendar for our spring tour. With Easter being late this year we must be careful to avoid certian dates, but the 12th or 26th April might be suitable options.
Whilst thinking about Easter, Holy Week is the 13th to the 19th of April . We usually hold our tower AGM on Maundy Thursday, so the 17th April might be the date, but we have to agree this between us.
An important job we must do this year is to install an upgrade to our CCTV and monitoring system, having agreed to do this after receiving a legacy in 2024 for tower improvements. We will wait until the warmer weather but we have started to spec out what we require. I think it will be beneficial as our current system takes a long time to ‘warm up’, especially in the cold weather!
Great Gransden Bell Ringers 