Bellringers’ Outing
Bellringing Outing St Mary’s, Lydiard Tregoze
Saturday 5th July dawned sunny and warm and saw the ringers from Lydiard Tregoze make their way to All Saints, Oaksey for the first ring of the day. The ground floor ring of six were lighter than most were used to but some useful ringing was completed and we all moved on a little further in our ringing experience. What marked out this church as very special were the outstanding medieval wall paintings – beautiful.
Our next tower All Saints in the village of Kemble had a lovely ring of six again on the ground floor. These were a little heavier and we enjoyed our hour of ringing there with several methods rung and a lot of plain hunting.
A well-earned lunch at the lovely ‘Greyhound’ pub in Siddington was a welcome break in our ringing schedule. This was followed by ringing at the small tower of St Peter’s church, Siddington, just a short walk from the pub. The small tower was a tight squeeze for our large group but we enjoyed our ring there with shorter ropes and unusual purple-coloured sallies.
Our final ring of the day was in All Hallows church in the village of South Cerney with its spacious bell tower. This allowed us all to be together standing-by, watching and swapping in for different methods, hunting and call changes.
In all we had one hour of ringing in each church and a very enjoyable lunch with easy travelling around this area of the south Cotswolds. However, our day was not yet finished – we reconvened at the tower captains house later that evening for an amazing BBQ, drinks (and a few more) and an astonishing variety of puddings. Eating and talking late into the evening we relived our ringing experiences of the day with everyone agreeing it was a useful and very enjoyable outing definitely to be repeated. Thanks to Jason and team for organising.
