Organising a tower outing is not as daunting as it first appears and is something I
would encourage all ringers to do at some stage.

Historically, our tower has only ever organised half day tours and given the other ringing commitments the Branch and indeed the Tower had that morning with a ringing course at the Troyte Ringing Centre and a visiting band respectively, I was content with sticking with the established format.

My methodology in planning our tower outing was broken down into smaller bite sized chunks, was very fluid in the initial planning stages and only firmed up once confirmations were established. Outline details of my planning were as follows:

1. I initially researched the towers in the general area of choice: in this instance North Devon. Both the Dove Bell Guide and YouTube were invaluable tools in establishing details of each tower (numbers of bells and their weights). YouTube of course showed bell rope draughts….something to be taken into account especially with relatively new learners on the trip.

2. Being an eight-bell tower, I thought it wise to stick with choosing eight and six bell towers, but lighter rings than our own, thus helping to maintain the known rhythm and tempo of such rings and reducing ringer fatigue with less weightier bells! I opted for three towers in total taking into account travelling after lunch and returning at a reasonable hour after dinner meal rounding  the day off nicely.

3. The next stage was timing: travel time to the first tower, length of time ringing at that tower (factoring in ringing up/down) and travel time to the next tower etc that all needed to be ‘calculated’. For travel times, I used ‘Google Maps’ and chose two eight (Ilfracombe and Combe Martin) and one six (Shirwell) bell tower followed with a bistro pub dinner to conclude the day at The Bridge   Inn, Dulverton.

4. Once rough travel timings were established [plus a fudge factor (heavy traffic, allowing time for parking and walking to the towers)] I contacted the tower representatives by email to check on their towers availability….for this I used the Guild of Devonshire Ringers website which provides all necessary tower contacts for those towers affiliated within the Guild. For each tower, I requested an hour slot. Taking into account ringing up and down equates to approximately 15 minutes, leaving 45 minutes in which to ring call changes and method affording everyone in the group some quality rope time. The pub was then contacted to
make a party booking (I over egged the numbers as its easier to turn the tap off rather than turning it on).

5. With confirmations received, I then made up a flyer advertising the event and included within the distribution a number of ringers who regularly attend our tower to join in the fun with us. Also advertised were the rope fees per person/per tower that were to be donated to each tower.

6. Telephone contact was made with each tower a week before the event to reconfirm availability and to act as a memory jogger. Contact details were also taken with me in the event of a tower lock out; always best to have a belt and braces approach, especially when travelling any real distance.

The trip was a real pleasure. The sun shone, everyone (11 ringers plus 4 partners) were all in good spirit and the towers all very ringer friendly (no horrors of badly worn ropes, not too many odd struck bells and certainly no flighty ropes and long draughts). We rang method and call changes that we were all comfortable with and did not ring anything unfamiliar…..in my opinion such trips should not be used as a ‘practice’ session which I deem unfair to the local community having the bells crashing around their ears and would certainly make arranging a future tower booking less viable as a consequence.

That’s it in a nutshell; nothing remotely onerous or as difficult as it first appears.

I do hope this will inspire others to arrange their own tower or indeed Branch outing in the not too distant future. There is something quite rewarding seeing your efforts come to fruition and observing fellow ringers enjoying themselves in this absorbing art.