Welcome to the summer edition of the Guild Newsletter, I hope that your towers are beginning to warm up after what seems like a very long winter and cold and wet spring. Our rope lengths seem to be returning to normal for the first time since last August!
The Alan Jacques Award is now open for nominations so if you have people in mind who go ‘over and above’ to support and promote ringing then please take 5 minutes to submit a nomination form (available from the website) and let us recognise these individuals who help to move ringing and ringers forward.
The Ringing World National Youth Competition is taking place on the 6th July and the LDG has a team entered from the Foundry Foxes; the best of luck to the team and many thanks to Sally Brown for managing the excursion to London to take part in the competition.
A big thanks to Ian Maynard-Smith and Will Norton for jointly taking on the role of Safeguarding Officers for the Guild. This is an important role in modern-day ringing and one that we need to get right. Ian and Will have issued initial guidance for LDG members and are now developing a Safeguarding Policy that ensures our arrangements align with policies already in place for the CCCBR and the Diocese. The requests made in this guidance are not onerous so I do hope that you can find the time to understand and support this important initiative to help protect not only our young ringers but also any vulnerable adults in the guild.
This last month I have been helping to organise the ‘man-power’ to support a major project by Taylor’s to replace the bell frame at Tilton on the Hill as the current frame has too much rust on it from water ingress to be salvageable. This project has been supported by a generous grant from the BRF and other charities plus a huge amount of effort from the local ringers and families to raise the money needed for the work. Not least of which was a sponsored abseil down the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth by Barry Richardson who is 85 and one of the regular ringers at Tilton. Good luck to Tilton with the project and thanks to all those who have volunteered to help get the old frame out. I’ll send a photo once we get started.
I am looking forward to getting out to some of the District meetings over the summer to meet ringers. I am also hoping that many of you will be able to come along to the next LDG Social hosted by the Melton District on the 20th July – more on that later in the Newsletter.
Pete Brown
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