August 2010

August: What a month! So much happened it’s difficult to know where to start but I’m going to go with the event that, to me personally, was the highlight: The Festival of Flowers. What an amazing display of flowers so beautifully and cleverly arranged – the church looked magnificent. I was in seventh heaven! Congratulations to all those involved. We were thrilled to be asked by Bill Brown if we would ring as part of the Flower Festival celebrations, something we were delighted to do.

Traditionally bellringers have an annual outing and the Swanage bellringers are no exception. This year our annual outing, “The Glorious Guildford Getaway”, took place on Saturday 14th August and, as the name suggests, was to Guildford! Over twenty of us set off very early in the morning. We started our ringing at St Mary’s which is an anti-clockwise ring of 6 bells (usually bells are rung clockwise). This was followed by the 8 bells of Holy Trinity and then the 10 bells of St Nicholas’. A long lunch at a nearby hostelry was then enjoyed by all. St Johns at Stoke-next-Guildford was our next port of call followed by the highlight of the outing; The Cathedral Church of the Holy Spirit with its magnificent ring of 12 bells. Guildford Cathedral has to be, in my mind, one of the ugliest cathedrals, however ringing there has to be one of the highlights of my year. The climb up to the ringing chamber is long, very long – to the point where you get “muscle burn” in your legs and wonder if you are ever going to make it to the top! When rested you can then climb another couple of flights of spiral steps up to the actual bell chamber. You can walk round the bells and you can also climb higher again to a gallery where you look down into the mouths of the bells and can watch as they are being rung. Fabulous! There’s a load of photos of the outing on the website – why don’t you have a look? Well done and many thanks to Eleanor Wallace for organising it all.

We ran a taster course “Learning Bellringing” on the four Wednesday evenings of the month. Seven recruits signed up for this and by the end of it all of them were able to ring both handstrokes and backstrokes. More importantly they got an insight into what bellringing entails and the commitment needed, not only to learning but to being available to ring for the church services.

Due to the success of the taster course a continuation course follows from mid-September to the end of October. We have a couple of spaces if anyone wants to join us? If so please give me a ring on 422435.

I had two personal firsts in August: A quarter peal of Plain Bob Major and my first quarter peal of treble bobbing on 8 bells. Although pleased to have scored these it has made me realise that my ‘major’ ringing still has a long way to go.