Having travelled to Worcester, Exeter and York for the previous 3 competitions it was rather nice to return to London this year. Certainly those of us from the Reading Branch regard London as being on our door-step. Not quite so close for other member of our squad of 14 ringers who used 6 different routes to meet at our first tower. Laura from Shipton under Wychwood, you can’t get much further west in the guild, had a particularly early start and Evie from Stewkley went north to Milton Keynes to get a fast train in. We are a big Guild.
The RWNYC started as an 8 bell competition with method teams competing for the Whitechapel Trophy and call change teams winning the Ringing World Editor’s Trophy for Excellence. Following Covid 6 bell teams were allowed to enter. 2024 saw another change with only the 8 bell bands being able to win one of the main trophy’s.
This year the 14, 6 bell call change bands and 5, 6 bell method bands competed at St James Garlickhythe. The 13, 8 bell call change bands and 4, 8 bell method bands competed at St Olave Hart Street. When not ringing their competition touches the bands had handbells, mini-rings and other towers to ring at with everyone going at some point to St Mary-le-Bow. A highlight for our aspiring tenor ringers.
In 2023 the ODG team entered as one of the 5, 6 bell method teams in York. It is a credit to how the squad has expanded and developed over the past year that we were able to enter the 8 bell method competition this year. We had some very stiff competition, just look at the number of peals the winning Yorkshire Tykes band have rung (Ringing World article) We finished with 7.5 points 3rd equal and received some very positive feedback from the judges, back bells keeping a good rhythm along with some areas to work on.
It was another grand day out. We could walk to all our allotted towers, St Lawrence Jewry, St Mary-le-Bow, St Michael Cornhill, Christchurch Spitalfields, St Boltoph without Aldgate and StMagnus London Bridge. St Pauls Cathedral was a fantastic location for the results.
It was great to see Sara Jones (ODG 2022 / 23) was a volunteer and Daniel Page (ODG 2015-2021) was one of the young judges for the 6 bell competition. Two of our parents were stewards and I met other ODG members throughout the day.
Jo Cresshull, the RWNYC organiser quoted a number of statistics in her final address, they included: 300 young ringers, 300 supporters, 140 leaders, 130 stewards, 13 towers across the city. We added 19000 steps to our list which included the final few for pizza before retracing our steps to our various main line stations and tubes to return home.
We look forward to 2025, if you have any young ringers please do encourage them to get involved. For more details contact Colin Lee on colinlee.cml@gmail.com or Jenny Page on jenny.page@btinternet.com