Author Archives: Phillip George

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

In good times i.e. pre pandemic, we usually ring about 8 quarter peals every year at Great Gransden. We have rung three so far this year and hope for many more in the coming months. But peals are a different matter. They take nearly three hours and require a different level of stamina and mentalContinue reading “A Full Peal is Rung and the Clock is Repaired!”

During the excitment of our quarter peals at the beginning of February we already had plans to ring a date touch on 22nd February. This date was chosen because it has all the two’s 22 02 2022, and it would be appropriate to ring 2022 changes on that day. And so, on Two’sday 22nd FebContinue reading “A Date Touch, and Thinking Ahead!”

We have just completed the third performance piece of ringing arranged from 5th to 7th February 2022, involving twelve different ringers. On Saturday 5th we rang a quarter peal of Cambridge S Minor which was our (Sheila and Phillip George) 250th on the bells. We also rang our first quarter peal on the bells together,Continue reading “Red Letter Weekend of Ringing!”

Our weekly practices are well supported and enhanced by daytime sim/tied bell sessions to help improve bell control, during which we practise dodges, calling changes and ringing up and down in peal. There is also a lot of theory and the whiteboard usually gets covered in lines and numbers! We also keep an eye onContinue reading “Getting into the New Year”

2021 has been a slightly more “normal” year than 2020, the latter being spent almost entirely in lockdown due to the Covid pandemic. Covid social distancing restrictions were eased on Monday 17th May 2021 but we were only allowed a maximum of six ringers in the tower and we had to sanitise our hands andContinue reading “2021 End of Year Summary”

It is Sunday 14th November 2021 and we have been ringing half muffled for the service of Remembrance this morning. We were able to ring all six to call changes. We also rang half muffled for practice on Thursday the 11th when nine ringers took part. The quarter peal attempt earlier in the day wasContinue reading “A Busy Ringing Week”

Ringing at the moment is a bit like a spluttering engine, one moment it is running and the next it suddenly stalls, and this is all beyond our control. We have had to cancel one tied bell practice and two ringing practices due mainly to our brush with Covid and the need for different individualsContinue reading “Plans for November 2021”

We had a good practice last night (Thursday 15th Oct) and welcomed Catherina who had come over to ring with us. Hon T/C delegated the running of the practice to David and he organised us to ring call changes, plain courses of Grandsire and 120’s of Plain Bob and St.Martins. A ladies band was selectedContinue reading “Progress or Just Catch Up!”

What does this mean? Well, its not like my garden shed with lots of tools and equipment where we manufacture tower captains, although it would be useful sometimes to have them ready made. The role of the tower captain is multi faceted. The TC (or Ringing Master) needs to be able to organise the ringingContinue reading “Tower Captain’s Workshop”