Sixty Changes and Home Again

A plain course of Plain Bob Minor, six bells, struck slowly, in D.

There is no tune here and nobody wrote one. Six bells fall down the scale — and then refuse to stay that way. Each pair steps past its neighbour, one place per row, never repeating a row, until sixty changes later they arrive back at the top of the scale as though nothing had happened at all.

Pick a bell. Follow the gold. That thread is the only thing a ringer memorises; everything else is rope, and patience, and standing very still.

slow quick
Rounds, then sixty changes, then rounds again. Twelve plain courses joined with bobs make an extent of 720 — every possible order of six bells, once each, about twenty-five minutes. Nobody has ever needed one. They are rung anyway.