The audience in the Arts Tent took to the stage to ring handbells at Eroica Britannia as I opened the acts for the day. Click below to visit the full page of film and photos of the day, plus some highlights of church bells and bikes at Eroica 2014 and 2015. Join us for more!
Thursday 3 July – ring across the county at 8.20pm for the Opening Ceremony. Cawthorne, Masham and Chapel Allerton pre-recorded along with Yorkshire Tykes band at Ossett.
Check the invitation on the Le Tour Yorkshire website below – “..a symbolic bringing together of the entire county to herald the beginning of Yorkshire’s Grand Depart..”
Ring a bell with us at your church, school, shop or on your bike. And if you don’t have a bell you can get an app to shake your phone and ring a bell. eg.
At 8.20pm the cameras will cut to Yorkshire bellringing. We are invited to ring from all our towers across the whole of Yorkshire.
With 52 practice nights that day anyway, we had a good start. Other bands are now rearranging their diaries to join us.
We will give a short coordinated burst of ringing from all towers at 8.20pm (this final time was confirmed on Monday 30 June).
I will share more info as it evolves here and on Facebook and Twitter @bellsandbikes and via the email group I use for Tower Briefings.
Please could you share this with everyone.
Please reply via Facebook or email rismay@virginmedia.com to confirm your involvement.
This is a wonderful chance to share Yorkshire bellringing with the world.
And it is for ALL towers in Yorkshire. Not just the race route. And for one bell, two bell and campanile towers. [ but if you live elsewhere you’d be welcome to pile in too 🙂 ]
Our invitation is to get the county ringing. (and the world! York in Australia and New York in America will be ringing Yorkshire too!)
Please also visit www.yorkshire.com for more news about Le Tour, the Grand Depart and the Opening Ceremony.
Pop it in your diary now. Maybe a quarter or peal to precede it too? Over to you
On 26 March, Otley bellringers welcomed BBC Songs of Praise to town. The programme will be aired on Sunday 29 June (5.25pm), the weekend before Le Tour.
Following our excitement at being invited to ring the bells of Yorkshire for the Opening Ceremony of the Tour de France on 3 July, we were delighted to welcome ITV Calendar News to come and find out more. And so on 18 June we chatted on camera outside Penistone church, met the enthusiastic local team from Cycle Penistone and then took the camera up the narrow spiral staircase to the bells.
Click here to see an excerpt from the interviews on ITV Player
Then click here to listen to 20 seconds of Penistone bells. This is an extract from 6 minutes of call changes. Call changes is where the order of the bells is changed by the conductor telling pairs of bells to swap with each other. The specific sequence you hear in this instance is called “Queens” 13572468.
And for the story in photos.
As a small crowd assembled there were rumours of an ITV van approaching.
The TV camera was soon set up and our Twitter master was soon lying on the floor looking up at the camera. Can’t resist those tricky angles
The interview was great. Colm was a very calm and clear interviewer. And when you’ve been planning bellringing for Le Tour for 18 months its not hard to think of a few things to say!
Colm filmed the ringers and then we went higher still. This is the second bell. The second lightest of the eight bells at Penistone. We rang it for him. Nice but loud!
Never tried looking down through the rope holes before. Well now I have.
With only 17 days to the Tour that means we must have had 83 days of the Yorkshire Festival already. Our filming with ITV seemed like a great reason for a formal presentation of a YFest badge to David.
Here’s the clock mechanism, bright and shiny. Whirring as the hour approached.
And here is the bellrope spider, which holds the rope ends to lift them safely out of reach when not being rung. Dennis carved it. And here he is.
I was 20 minutes early. Hey, I know, I’ll run down to Cycle Penistone. “They’re having a committee meeting” I was told. “Well I think they won’t mind being interrupted for this!” And in a matter of minutes Le Tour de Penistone was shaping up outside the lychgate.
Family fan club. My Mum is now an experienced YFest fan having attended The Grand Departs on Cragg Vale, The Bike Show at Barnsley Civic, Handmade Parade in Todmorden and Gary’s dry stone wall bike (of which more will be revealed in the coming days).
Not forgetting that there is still some tarmac to be laid for Le Tour
And despite The World Cup squeezing the half hour Calendar news down to 5 minutes today, here we were on TV. And online for fans worldwide.
All this happened because of bells being part of the Opening Ceremony of Le Tour on Thursday 3 July in Leeds. We are invited to get the bells ringing all across the county so please do join us. If you are church bellringer, please ring at the time to be confirmed between 8.30 – 9pm that evening. We welcome you to ring whether your tower has 1 bell or 12 bells or whatever. Please do join us to give a loud welcome to Le Tour.
And if you aren’t a ringer but have a bell or a bike bell or a bell app on your phone, you are welcome too. Let’s get ringing!
Fans of Bells and Bikes will of course spot that York is on the Le Tour De France race route in Yorkshire. Sunday 6 July 2014 to be exact Le Tour Yorkshire.
Which Yorkshire tower will be next… It could be you… #bepartofit
With the world’s eyes and ears on Yorkshire, what better time to share the sound of our ringing via BBC Radio 4 Bells on Sunday.
If you ring in a tower on the race route and have a good recording, or can arrange one, please let Rod know via the usual channels. We can then submit for consideration by the producers.
Check out the link below for advice on recordings from The Ringing World.