Alternative Rope Sight Ideas

In the previous post I commented on the difficulty of teaching rope sight, I thought I would expand on some thoughts and ideas to practice/develop this tool.

Covering

A cover is the name given to the last bell to sound in a method where it never changes, i.e. the 6th during plain hunt on 5.
When covering, it is not necessary to know the order of bells that you follow but by covering you know that the pace of your ringing doesn't need to change so you have your set rhythm and can set about just spotting the last bell.
This then enables the tenor ringer to see the bells coming up to the back and has the advantage that they are only concentrating on which is the last bell and not needing to change pace.

Spot the order

Slightly more of a challenge. While sitting out of the circle, wait for a couple of call changes to be called and see if you can spot the order of the bells.
This has the advantage that once you have spotted one bell, you can disregard it when trying to observe the order.

E.g. if the bells are in tittums 142536.

The learner can spot the treble is leading, so they know when looking for the 2nd place bell they don't need to look at the treble. Then once the 4 has been observed there are then only four other bells to try and spot.

Trebling to a little method

Previous posts have detailed various little methods for doubles (http://ringingtips.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Little) and ringing the treble to some of these helps the ringer develop some rope sight. But only needing to spot up to thirds (so up to two other ropes beneath them).

Bistow is just making 2nds so you only need to spot which bell takes you from the lead.

Stanwell, Clewer, Hampton, Laleham have fairly straight forward rules; so the bell order you pass will be ABAB lead lead BCBC, that is the bell that takes you from the lead you ring over in the 2nd place of thirds, the bell you ring over in your first blow in thirds takes you out of the lead.

Littleton is slightly different with the order being ABBA lead lead CDDC, the bell that takes you out of the lead, you take out of the lead, and the 2 blows in third over the same bell.

Grandsire

Ringing either of the hunt bells for Grandsire are useful, this one is more complicated and requires the ringer to have a feel of hunting all the way to the back, but with sign posts as to what is their first/last bell.