A lovely sunny day set the scene for the KCACR 6-bell Call Change Contest at Barming in the afternoon of Saturday 27th September.
Our KYR team had managed to meet up for one practice at ringing 10 minutes of call changes on 6 bells the previous Saturday. Oscar had the calling under his belt. Team members were happy and smiley, especially at being drawn to ring 3rd out of 5 teams. It was a good experience ringing on the lovely bells at Barming and listening from various quarters of the churchyard.
Esmé and Lexie were introduced to ringing plain hunt 8 on handbells and really got the hang of it after only a few minutes.
It was a bit tense waiting for the results in the church! We discovered that KYR had rung the fastest of the 5 teams, ringing 314 rows of changes in the ten minutes allowed, ringing 22 rows more than the band from the Ashford District who incurred the same number of faults: 45.5. Bredgar had incurred 32.5 faults, ringing 302 rows and were placed first, defending their 1st position from 2024
After a little discussion the KYR team was placed 2nd , Ashford 3rd, the Ladies’ team 4th with 61 faults and Boxley 5th with 93.5 faults. Well done everyone… and we look forward to the KYR team consolidating or improving on their performance in 2026!
Harvest Supper: Saturday 11th October at Seal Chart
Lexie and Esmé had managed to squeeze in a little more handbell practice and joined Jen and Shirley Raynor to ring handbell tunes and plain hunt to entertain the diners at the Seal Chart Harvest Supper. They were also very competent in helping members of the audience to ring Plain Hunt 8 (one handbell each and moving places each “blow”. It was a great evening.
Handbell quarter peal: Many thanks to Lottie and Mark Elvers for ringing a quarter peal of Plain Bob Minimus, extents counted by Lottie, on the 5th Anniversary of the death of Tom Barlow. They rang the “Barlow Bells”, handbells which Jacqui gave to the KYR in Tom’s memory.
Thursday 23rd October was a busy, productive day: a quarter peal of Plain Bob Doubles at Aylesford: a first on the treble for Lexie, first for Matthew with KYR and Lottie’s first calling P B Doubles. It was pretty good striking throughout, too. Ospringe had been on a tower outing to the Isle of Sheppey in the morning and early afternoon, so their three youngsters (and minders!) then joined forces with us and three more to take on the 10-pin bowling alley at Maidstone. Jen was thrilled to get a strike and be up in the lead at one point as she’s normally pretty near the bottom of the scoreboard! I think Lexie ended up as overall winner.
For our next stop the older YR (and minders) invaded the Rochester Cathedral practice, admired the spectacular night views and enjoyed ringing on this fine 10 before our last road trip back home: a VERY chatty end to the day!
