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| Mark attempting to ring handbells |
The 20th annual Essex Ringing course was held on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of the week after Easter. 75 students attended the course, held at Honywood School in Coggeshall, together with around 150 tutors and helpers; so quite an event! Groups ranged from rounds and call changes through to Double Norwich via plain hunt, Grandsire and Bob Minor. This was the third year I have attended the course. In previous years I have learnt Stedman and Cambridge but this year I joined the Learning to Teach sessions run by Adrian Semken. The emphasis was on teaching bell handling from scratch and most of the time we practiced what we were taught on fellow novice teachers. It is surprising how difficult it is to pretend to be a complete beginner and to remember what the early stages of learning to ring are like. Most of the other groups held their practical sessions at the wide variety of towers in the local area and in previous years I have found this a great experience trying the different bells. This time my group concentrated on using the simulator at Coggeshall church, fitting around other groups. On the Friday we joined Steve Nash’s call change group to see if we could see any handling funnies. His group had obviously made great progress as they were ringing plain hunt! On the Saturday we were let loose on a real novice “guinea pig” and got him ringing backstroke quite competently
As well as the main tutor groups other sessions were arranged and included rope splicing, listening skills and conducting. This year I attempted hand bell ringing which was very challenging but fun and my tutors showed great patience!
Once again the course was extremely well run, very rewarding and great fun. My only regret was that only a few students from our district made use of this wonderful event. Next year the course will be held from the 14th to the 16th April so please put those dates in your diaries. I hope to see more of you on the course next year when I aim to attend as a helper.
