C and I having been ringing just 2 bells at the Cathedral on a Sunday morning now for exactly 4 months.  Prior to that we could ring in 2 groups so long as we were socially distanced, but since the last increase in Tiers and lockdowns, we had to reduce it to just the 2 of us.

We’ve got ourselves into a very good routine by ringing 1 and 2, then make places and back, then 3 dodges, then 3 places again, and we just keep doing that.  This means that you end up alternating dodging at handstrokes and backstrokes.  It’s a good handling practice, but its surprising easy to lose count up to 3!

Each week I’ve been taking a video and uploading it to our #bellringing social media so my friends can see that we’re still alive and doing something.  There are those who would ordinarily be ringing with us but can’t at the moment.  The majority of towers still aren’t ringing at all, so we’re lucky that the 2 of us can at least do something.  It seems to be well appreciated by the Cathedral, and we’ve had some comments from the public on our social media sites saying that they miss the sound of the bells, or that they heard us ringing our 2 bells.

We ring in short 5 or so minute bursts between about 10am and 10.30am, immediately prior to the morning service that is live streamed on the Cathedral’s social media.  I don’t think that any of our ringing has featured at all, as we’ve generally finished and wound our way down the spiral stairs just as the service starts.  We hope that the local community find some solace in the hearing of the bells and that the church is still “open”. 

We will continue to do our bit as long we as are able, and we wait patiently for when the time comes that we are able to welcome our bellringing colleagues back and we can ring on more bells and make a joyful sound.