When it became clear that we were not going to be ringing (or, some might say, more importantly, socialising) for a while, I decided we needed to do something to keep everyone engaged. We have a wide range of abilities at our Hub, so it needed to be wide ranging enough to keep everyone interested. Having seen 30 day photo challenges on Facebook I thought we could adapt this for ringing and over a couple of days I came up with the 31 day challenge.

We have published it through our hub Facebook page and also shared it to the general bell ringers’ Facebook group. Other guilds have taken it on board as well as individual towers. We have had some interesting and amusing submissions as part of the challenge!

We are now coming to the end of our 31 day challenge and some of our ringers want a similar thing for May! We are going to make this a group effort to come up with a May challenge.

As well as our 31 day challenge we have a virtual pub session via zoom every Wednesday, which is our usual practice night, and this has turned into quiz night where we each come up with a round of 10 questions and then answer as a team. Slightly worried about the husband and wife team who themed their round on poison. Lockdown is obviously going well there!

On a Saturday morning we are continuing with our Saturday School and hosting this on Ringing Room and Zoom. One of our LtR Level 1 learners had their first attempt at drumming behind last week and did brilliantly so we are moving on to Plain Hunt this week. Our more experienced ringers are mainly too busy for Saturday School at the moment but we are hoping they will be joining in soon!

Author: Jennie Higson