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| The St. Peter's band ringing at Epping |
It has been over a year since my last article on bell ringing written for the Parish Magazine and much has happened in my bell-ringing career. I have been on two courses run by the Essex Association of Change Ringers (one on Stedman and the latest one on Cambridge Surprise Minor) and I have learnt a great deal. I have also started calling some very simple touches of Bob Doubles and Minor and Grandsire Doubles, which is good fun if it all works out well and comes round (that means that the ringing ends up in rounds as it should do)! I am well away from being able to put people right though. It was an honour to be elected as deputy tower captain at our last AGM and I have started helping Beth with the teaching of two new learners, Mike and Paul.
We have had three outings since my last report, one excellent main outing to Kent organised by Maria and two mini outings to relatively local churches, organised by me. Our latest mini outing was held on Saturday 2nd May, on the May Day bank holiday weekend. I had originally planned for us to ring at four churches in the Epping area. Unfortunately, the correspondent from the church at Loughton told me that their number seven bell had suffered a broken gudgeon. We were welcome to ring but ringing without the seven is not very pleasant so we decided to give Loughton a miss. I did try to get us a ring at Waltham Abbey but they were holding a wedding that afternoon. It was actually lucky that I could not book the Abbey as they have twelve bells and the tenor weighs in at almost two tons. There was scepticism from our band as to whether we would have been able to do these bells justice! I decided therefore that three towers would be sufficient this time. These were Epping, Chigwell and Chigwell Row. Very shortly after sending out my request to ring I had a phone call from a lovely lady from Chigwell who was very enthusiastic for us to visit, as the proposed day was when their flower festival was to be held.
With arrangements having been made and the towers confirmed, we all met at the vicarage to travel to the first tower at Epping. Maria drove the minibus and I drove separately as my family wanted to come along for the ride. We arrived after the minibus as I mistakenly chose to follow the advice of my sat nav and travel up the M11, which was rather slow going. Anyway, we all made it in time and there was plenty of parking (free on Saturday!). Unfortunately the church itself was locked up so we could not have a good look around. A few steps had to be climbed up the tower to the ringing room, which was pleasant and quite spacious. There were two intriguing pin boards mounted on the walls allowing methods to be shown using coloured wool threaded between the pins. They have eight bells, like St. Peter’s, but a little heavier that I am used to with the tenor weighing about a ton. I had asked Ian to run this tower and we rang a variety of things from rounds and call changes to Cambridge Surprise Major (I sat out for that one!) Jenny did particularly well ringing the treble to Bob Doubles on the back six where I had fun trying to cope with the tenor. These bells were fun to ring but there was a rather worrying, deep thud as the ropes were pulled which I was told was most likely due to a moving bell frame! After an hour it was time to move onto our next destination, Chigwell.
We arrived at Chigwell in good time so we were able to have a cup of tea in the church hall arranged for the flower festival. Suitably refreshed, we made our way into the church, which was beautifully adorned with flowers. This was a lovely church and very welcoming. A few visitors were looking around and, as this was a ground floor ring where the ringers could be seen from the church, it looked like we would have an audience. The bells were an eight hundredweight six and turned out to be lovely to ring. This time Paul was in charge of the ringing and we rung Plain Bob Doubles through to Cambridge Surprise Minor and Stedman Doubles. Paul tried to persuade me to ring London but I was not confident at all so I sat out and managed to take some time to look around the Church. We also tried Reverse Canterbury Doubles, which would have been all right, but confusion reigned over the Bobs, which I was told were the same as Plain Bob bobs but different! We were having a lovely time but again, after an hour, we had to leave to make our way to Chigwell Row, just a short distance away.
Fred, the Chigwell Row Tower Captain, met us at the entrance to the Tower. He was impressed that we were on time and showed us up to the ringing room. The eight bells at Chigwell Row are similar weight to St. Peter’s and they sounded good and went well. The previous Tower Captain had thoughtfully chosen a different sally colour for the tenor and the treble so there was no problem in knowing what bell you were ringing! Looking through the visitors book Vic found an old entry, which showed he had rung a peal there several years ago. Beth was running this tower and once again the ringing here was fun and enthusiastic and I even managed to ring half a plain course of Cambridge Surprise Major. I had arranged just 45 minutes of ringing here which was just as well as by 5 o’clock we were ready to leave having had a great but tiring time.
We headed back to the Vicarage where Ian and Maria hosted a very welcome barbeque, the highlight being Pam’s excellent salad and Ray’s ability to eat vast quantities of beef burgers. As usual on these occasions Paul did the cooking wonderfully well but refused to cook sausages! The only downside to the evening was that my team consisting of Matthew, my 5 year old son John and I, lost 4 – 2 to Paul and Maria in the football match played amongst the mole hills!
We all had a lovely day. The towers visited were all different in character and excellent rings and the barbeque rounded things off nicely. We are looking forward to our main outing in September, which will be organised by Paul.
