A steamy ringing outing to the Severn Valley

On a bright Saturday morning in mid-September 2018, seventeen members of the Wimborne Minster band of bellringers boarded a train at Kidderminster Station in Worcestershire for Bridgnorth. But this wasn’t just any train; this was a Severn Valley steam train, with proper wooden luggage racks, windows which could slide open (who needs health and safety anyway?) and billows of steam puffing out of the engine funnel. Needless to say, it was difficult to work out what this group of passengers found more exciting – the train ride, or the prospect of a day devoted to ringing.

The annual tower outing had begun the day before. While eight members of the group whiled away Friday afternoon ringing a peal of five-spliced Surprise Major at St Stephen’s, Barbourne, the others headed into Worcester city centre. A pleasant hour or two was spent looking around the cathedral and visiting a coffee shop (one of us even found the time to have a haircut), before heading to the 6cwt ring of 10 at Old St Martin’s. We were all very impressed by the array of brightly-coloured sallies and were grateful for the help of Paul Smith, a local ringer who, due to splitting his time between Worcester and Dorset, knew some of us already. After being reunited with the peal band, it was time for a ring at Wolverley (8) then dinner at the hotel followed by a spot of handbell ringing and an early night, to make sure that we’d be bright-eyed and ready to enjoy what we’d all been waiting for – the train!

And so we found ourselves at the station in Kidderminster on Saturday morning. Thanks to information from the Severn Valley Railway and some local ringers we’d managed to put together an itinerary where we would take the train to Bridgnorth and work our way back down the railway, ringing at four towers along the route; this meant we had a long train journey at the start of the day. For those of us who had come armed with a newspaper, this was a chance to get up to date on the crossword, and for the others there was plenty of entertainment in watching the animals in the safari park as the train passed by.

For the two towers in Bridgnorth we were joined by Alice Stanley, a ringer in the town who recently visited Wimborne and whose cousin (coincidentally) had learnt to ring at the Minster. After an hour at the lovely 8cwt ring of 8 at St Mary’s (where we managed to ring everything from call changes to Bristol Major), we stopped at one of the (19!) pubs in Bridgnorth for a spot of lunch. The staff had put on a wonderful buffet-style spread for us that was not unlike a ringers’ tea, although this one included freshly cooked chips which went down extremely well – perhaps they should become a staple at regular ringers’ teas! After ringing at the heavier (18cwt) 8 at St Leonard’s, we had to march quickly back to the station to catch our next train; being a couple of minutes late was definitely not an option on this outing!

On the journey south, we stopped in Bewdley to visit the 8 bells at St Anne’s which, due to the fact that the tower had been having an open day, were probably tired out already! This visit was followed by a trip to the ice cream shop by the river, another activity which really ought to become an entrenched bellringing tradition.

The forlornness felt by many of us at leaving the lovely steam train was cancelled out by the prospect of ringing on the 12 in Kidderminster that evening; although ringing on 8 during the day had been wonderful, it was nice to get back to what a lot of the group felt most comfortable doing. The bells were similar to ours in both weight and style and, even though it was our last tower of the day, the ringing at Kidderminster was some of the best we’d had all outing; a lovely end to the day before setting off on the long drive back to Dorset.

Thanks go to Hilary Child (the organiser), Severn Valley Railway and those local ringers who opened up/joined us on the day. Also, a mention goes to Harry Blamire, who was at the last minute unable to join us and was greatly missed. Several of us seem to have been nominated to organise next year’s outing, so we should probably make a start on that now!