Ringing Forums

good comment, where's the goddam like button. Oh, wait... :razz:

There are barriers beyond Bob Minor which are quite difficult to overcome — Simon Linford

One of them being PB itself, particularly due to the way it is taught, which turns it into a dead end even if the method itself isn't. PB5 is a poor choice of teaching method in the first place, I used to get two plain courses of PB5 a week, how the hell was I supposed to learn to dodge properly with just 4 dodges a week?

There's a big jump in the core ringing skills needed to move beyond PB-by-the-numbers, and in my experience they simply aren't taught. So lost of ringers get stuck struggling and failing to ring PB5-by-the numbers for literally years.

I listened to a very interesting talk yesterday that focused on exactly these issues with the "traditional progression" teaching and how they might be addressed. For example bell control training mostly stops after you are unlikely to kill yourself. *All* the skills need continual, integrated teaching rather than "Done that, next".

The more interesting question is what is the median point for those who lave learnt to ring in about, say, the last decade or two?

I think it's worth distinguishing between "can ring reliably, bobs, singles & all" and "working towards it". I suspect PB6 is not the median for ringers in the late-starters group. PH5 is more likely I think.

I think that anyone who gets to ART level 5 is a bit of a star. How many new ringers get much beyond that?

Last time I looked the attrition rate between L1 and L5 was 95%. If that isn't a sign that things aren't working in the upper ART stages, I don't know what it is, but it seems to pass without comment, let alone action.

ART is great up to around L3 but unless you live in an area with lots of active towers and strong bands, it's pretty much useless beyond that. The ART syllabus becomes much more spotty and the over-reliance on QPs is a mistake IMHO. I've got to L4, if I squint at the requirements hard I think I probably need one QP of Grandsire5 for L5 but I've already rung 2 QPs of the "harder" PB6 and I've taught myself or am learning Kent, Oxford, the other 4 Oxford Group methods, Stedman, Grandsire and Norwich. ART has been almost completely irrelevant to me for several years and if I get to L5 it will be as a by-product of other ringing I'm doing, not because of it.

If ART's goals is to get people ringing CC & PH for service ringing than I'd say it has been a great success. If it's to produce method ringers then it's an abysmal failure, even judging by their own stats.

I think I've only been to a handful of district practices since I started, I too find them very intimidating and don't get much from them. Targeted sessions with a clear emphasis on training are much more appealing because you feel less of an "imposition" - I think that's a pretty universal feeling at my level and something that's badly underestimated by most branch officers. Targetted sessions aren't a panacea either though, they often appear to be aimed at the people running them - "Improve your Bristol Max" etc - rather than the "Coarse Ringers" like myself.

Speaking of which, someone really needs to add a book to this series covering ringing ;-)
https://www.goodreads.com/series/167024-art-of-coarse

Even more interesting is why they get that far and no further.

This is a known problem with LED lighting, and is usually a function of cost - cheaper = more flicker. The only realistic fix is to change to lighting to something that's adheres to a low-flicker standard, but that's inevitably going to be more expensive than some cheap no-name LED fixtures.

• https://www.instyleled.co.uk/what-causes-led-flicker-and-how-can-i-stop-it-happening/
• https://www.waveformlighting.com/flicker-free-led-lighting
• https://www.led-professional.com/resources-1/articles/flicker-standards-and-test-methods

As a relatively older and relatively recent starter I think you are right about "Peak Peal" having being passed. I can't see myself ever ringing peals even if I could, due to time constraints - I'm still working full-time, and expect to be for most the next decade, by which time I'll be in my late 60s. Even QP opportunities are relatively scarce for me and they are long enough for my taste anyway. When I do get to ring QPs my ringing has definitely improved afterwards. But until the last month or so I'd had a 2 year gap (not by choice) so for me it was like starting over from scratch when we rang a couple of QPs of PB6 at practices, when we met short with 6 ringers.

the most prolific peal ringers I know are exactly as you describe - they have being ringing since their youth and are now retired. I think your other observations are on the money as well. Although in the case of my home tower, it's never got beyond CCs for many decades, so I don't think the issues are entirely new.

I was talking to one of the long-standing ringers at a practice yesterday after a touch of Oxford Minor had been rung and he mentioned that Oxford was the basis of other methods such as Sandal, Capel etc. I've taught myself to ring spliced Oxford Group on the tower sim, but I've realised I'll be unlikely to ever learn to ring them 'for real'. He carried on to say "They used to be rung around here a lot, but none of those people are ringing any more". Ringing higher numbers is obviously important, but in many areas even quality Minor ringing is becoming scarce, and if it's a struggle to find 6 people to ring methods, you are even less likely to find 8, 10 or 12.

I found it - chapter 10 of "The Bellringer's Bedside Companion". The two seem to cover same territory and the CC one has the advantage of being free ;-)

Our spire is empty above the bells and the wind tends to spiral inside and dislodge anything loose from the stonework. Before the rehang we had literally inches of stone dust and dirt on the floor under the bells. Apart from the damp it traps, it can also get inside pulley bearings - our old ones were rubbish anyway, but where destroyed by grit ingress. About every 6 months or so I vacuum all of it up.

I think one of Steve Coleman's books also has something on the subject?

The general public definitely do know the difference between good and bad striking, because round here they actually tell me when it's good. Latest example was last Sunday when we rang to open the Xmas fair - we had a couple of "ringer" ringers as we were short, and the ringing was better than usual as a result, and people noticed :roll:

As for why it's generally an issue, I think that unfortunately it's an inevitable consequence of how ringing is taught, which is overwhelmingly by vision. From the very start it's drummed in to people to "follow the bell in front". Unquestioningly. Ringers who have been ringing for much longer that I have will tell me "X was holding up" and when I say "Just ring over them" then they simply can't bring themselves to. The result is entirely predictable, one bad striker in a band where people solely ring by vision and it's game over.