I’ve wanted to get into bellringing for ages after watching Matt ring quite a bit and though I contacted Derby Cathedral earlier this year to ask about learning with them, they were quite useless at getting back to me.

However, when I was in Manchester on Saturday, I heard the Cathedral bells being rung and went to ask the tower captain about where I could learn to ring around here. He told me that there was nowhere that currently taught near me, but gave me details of towers in Salford. I decided that was a bit of a trek for me and went to evensong at my local tower last night to ask about it on the offchance that maybe, even if they didn’t teach anybody at the moment, they’d have someone experienced enough and willing to teach me - and they did!

So, I had my first practice tonight. I did some handstrokes and backstrokes, both quite familiar, as Matt has done some basic stuff with me on the occasions I’ve been at the tower where he teaches in Edgware, but nothing more just yet. I’ll hopefully be going to another tower, where the person teaching me tonight also rings, to do a bit more, and we’ll see how it goes!