Stage 2 of the Tour de Yorkshire (Saturday 2 May 2015) saw a rich variety of churches, bellringing and community decorations.
In the 21 photos below I share images from Bubwith, Holme on Spalding Moor, Norton on Derwent and Wetwang.
You don’t have to be a cyclist to love the Tour de Yorkshire.
Just look at how all these communities have got into the spirit. Brilliant!
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
http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/update/2014-06-18/bell-ringing-to-welcome-tour-de-france/
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!
York St Wilfrid’s hosted their Open Day and Bell-Ringing Demonstration on Saturday 7 June. It was a great event. Bells, cakes and brilliant technology overcame the adverse weather. Photos via the Facebook link below.
https://www.facebook.com/RJHYork/media_set?set=a.10154176130160162.1073741841.840690161&type=3
Listen to the bells at
http://www.stwilfridsbellringers.org.uk/the-bells/
St Wilfrid’s also featured recently on BBC Radio 4 Bells on Sunday
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006sgsh
Full story of the Open Day now follows:
“Much as we’d like to tell our French visitors this summer that the hot sunny weather they will (undoubtedly) experience when Le Tour arrives is normal, the truth is that is it does sometimes rain quite heavily throughout the day in Yorkshire.
The day of the St Wilfrid’s York Open Day was one such day. Cakes were lined up at the ready to cater for people fleeing the assault of the elements, but most people seemed to have opted to stay in, or were on a mission to get somewhere.
It wasn’t the best day for a wedding either, especially if you have opted for a vintage camper van for your bridal transport and it refuses to start. So the St Wilfrid’s Ringers found themselves helping to jump start the wedding car – not their usual role at a wedding !
Home made cakes and other refreshments were provided for wedding guests and other visitors, and, after the wedding, the bell-ringers gave demonstrations of bell-ringing.
How are bells rung ? How are the musical patterns you hear chosen ? What actually happens to the bell when the bell-rope is pulled ? Some ringing helped to show what had been described, and a live feed from a camera up among the bells showed what was actually going on when the bell-ringers pulled ropes in the chamber down below.
There were enthusiastic responses from people after their tours. Visitors included church members, local residents and tourists. Many had a go at ringing a bell themselves – some of them so enthusiastically they didn’t want to stop.
At the end of the day our visitors had had an enjoyable and informative experience, and over £400 had been raised for bell maintenance funds. It wasn’t the easiest day to be doing an event like this, but it proved worthwhile , and the ringers at St Wilfrid’s are grateful to everyone who braved the rain so cheerfully, and came and joined us. We hope for better weather when Le Tour passes through.”
Dewsbury Minster Fest was a rip-roaring success on Saturday 14 June. Bells were part of it. But there was so much more to do aswell.
Well done Derek and Ronalda and all the team at Dewsbury for their hard work and enthusiam.
This was a fringe event for the Yorkshire Festival. Formal advert available via the link at the foot of this post.
It attracted good crowds to come and have a go at huge range of activities from drumming to creative writing, from biscuit dressing to bicycle yarnstorming, from learning ukelele to learning handbells. And trying church bells up the tower and on the Wombel training bell.
We were also joined by local press from Dewsbury and Huddersfield so watch out for stories in the papers.
More photos on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dewsbury-Minster-Festival-2014/1424435387807226
And the advert for the event on the Yorkshire Festival site is below:
http://festival.yorkshire.com/events/art-and-culture-yorkshire-festival-at-dewsbury-minster
