My main hobby at the moment is Change Ringing. This is a particular way of ringing church bells, and involves the participants pulling on a rope (perhaps 15 metres long) attached to a wheel, which swings a bell (perhaps 1000kg in weight) around in a circle and makes it go 'dong' roughly a second later. The tricky bit is timing all this accurately to a twentieth of a second or less, while making all sorts of interesting patterns with the combinations of bells. Change ringing developed in England about 400 years ago, and although it has spread to other parts of the UK and the world, it remains mainly an English hobby. It's great fun and heartily recommended.
Some dates and statistics in case you're interested — My first ringing lesson was on Sunday 6 October 1996, at SFX in Liverpool, after I had arrived at the university there and had met some jolly nice people from LUSCR at the Freshers' Fair. I lived in Liverpool for three years and rang my first quarter-peal (at SFX on 5 April 1998) and peal (at Bidston on 2 May 1998) there. After that I moved to Surrey and rang at Weybridge and Stoke-next-Guildford, and then I moved again, to Cambridge, where I occasionally ring at Great St Mary's with the Society of Cambridge Youths. At the time of writing I've rung 642 quarter-peals (178 as conductor) and 171 peals (12 as conductor). I've also rung at over 2,250 different towers around the British Isles.
The various ringing-related pages on this website
- My ringing records – lists and statistics (a bit out of date, mostly).
- Quarter-peal compositions of:
- The standard 8 Surprise Maximus, as few changes as possible.
- Treble-Dodging Minor – standard touches for all regular methods.
- Spliced Surprise Major
- Plain Bob Major.
- Grandsire: Major, Royal, Maximus, Fourteen.
- Eponymous methods – the Guildford Guild, the Surrey Association, and Langley methods.
- Short articles I wrote for The Ringing World in 1998 and 1999. I have written a few more since, and will try to collect them together.
- My ringing library – The Ringing World, annual reports and other books.