If I get this wrong, 50,000 people will hear it.

0:00 When I first put a call out for video ideas around England,

0:03 so many people suggested bell-ringing.

0:05 It is much more complicated than just playing a tune,

0:09 and also, dangerous if you do it wrong.

0:13 No matter where you are in England,

0:15 there will be a church with a bell tower not too far away.

0:18 You’ll hear church bells on Sundays in almost every town and village.

0:22 At Worcester Cathedral, early in the morning before the Sunday service,

0:26 I met the ringing master,

0:28 Darren, and the first thing we did was go up to the top of the tower.

0:31 That’s beautiful!

0:32 I think I can see the rainstorm coming in.

0:35 Yeah, probably in about ten minutes that’ll be over the cathedral.

0:38 (bells ringing) Oh!

0:39 Never mind.

0:40 Shall we go and see some bells?

0:41 -Yep, let’s go down.

0:43 -Alright.

0:43 There is an unmistakable sound to English church bells,

0:46 because instead of one person playing a particular song,

0:49 there’s a different person ringing each bell,

0:52 and together, they’re playing mathematical patterns.

0:55 It’s called “change ringing”,

0:56 which is where we get the phrase, “ringing the changes”.

0:59 There are so many words and phrases in English that come from bell-ringing.

1:03 When the bells are ringing,

1:04 (bells ringing) you can feel the tower moving a few inches in all directions.

1:09 -Yeah, you can!

1:10 -(laughs) There’s enough mass in those bells

1:12 that they swing the whole cathedral tower.

1:14 -Yeah.

1:14 Yeah, so our tower moves a bit more than most towers.

1:18 It’s still perfectly safe, but it’s quite noticeable up here.

1:21 It felt like being in a very slight earthquake every time the biggest bell,

1:26 the tenor bell, rang.

1:28 Which brings up the obvious question: how big are these bells?

1:31 We put on ear defenders and went down a level into the belfry.

1:35 (bells ringing) They all stopped so perfectly.

1:44 -Yeah, it doesn’t always happen!

1:45 -(laughs) Sometimes one carries on.

1:48 But they managed it just right there.

1:51 So this is the biggest one that we ring.

1:53 -Wow.

1:54 That weighs two and a half tonnes.

1:55 Do you know which foundry?

1:57 -Taylor’s Foundry in Loughborough.

1:58 -I was there a couple weeks ago.

2:01 Those bells were made by the same foundry

2:03 I visited at the start of the road trip!

2:06 And they are colossal,

2:07 they’re making the tower shake because the largest one is two and a half tonnes.

2:12 You’ll notice they’ve all been left pointing upwards...

2:16 More on that in a minute.

2:17 So, they were all cast in 1928, and so,

2:20 they’re coming up to a hundred years old.

2:23 And they’re one of the finest sounding sets in the world.

2:25 So, we’re really lucky here at Worcester Cathedral to have these.

2:28 Wow!

2:30 So, we’ll get a better view from round here.

2:32 Yeah.

2:33 I mean, that was a pretty good view.

2:34 I could feel the wind coming from them.

2:37 We climbed up to an overlook,

2:38 and Darren texted down to ask the bell-ringers for another quick ring:

2:42 we’ll meet them in a minute.

2:43 It was Sunday morning,

2:44 so this wasn’t going to be unexpected for everyone around in Worcester.

2:47 When they get ready to go,

2:49 you might see the tenor start rocking because it’s so heavy.

2:52 You have to bounce it before it will go.

2:54 -Right.

2:55 And then, yes, that will be the first bell,

2:57 the smallest one, the treble, to ring.

2:59 So, he’s getting ready to go, or she.

3:01 -Yep, there we go.

3:02 (bells ringing) That was one of the loudest things I’ve ever heard.

3:11 You can feel it in your bones, in your internal organs.

3:13 The sound hits you, particularly every time the big tenor bell goes.

3:17 Change ringing starts and ends with a scale,

3:21 highest-to-lowest, and in between, plays about with that pattern.

3:25 (bells ringing) (bells reverberating) That’s magic!

3:33 How on earth?!

3:35 There are actually sixteen ringing bells, because we have some semitones.

3:41 You can’t ring them all at the same time, it doesn’t give you a true scale.

3:45 But we can swap particular bells for a sharp or a flat version of it,

3:50 and get a different scale.

3:52 And actually we’re the only tower in the world

3:54 that can produce a harmonic minor ring of ten.

3:59 I don’t know what that is but it sounds impressive!

4:01 It sounds impressive and it sounds fantastic.

4:03 It’s a mournful sound, a minor key, so,

4:06 we ring them for remembrance and other mournful occasions.

4:09 I regret making a joke about that now.

4:11 I’ve got to ask what the pipe’s for?

4:12 -That’s for sound.

4:13 -This pipe.

4:14 It’s actually an experiment at the moment,

4:16 but that particular bell is a bit quiet in the room that we ring from.

4:21 And that’s a way of trying to get more sound downstairs.

4:24 It hasn’t solved the problem yet,

4:26 but it’s a bit of a trial and error sort of experiment.

4:30 But that’s what it’s for.

4:31 Each of those bells is connected by a long rope down to the ringing chamber,

4:36 and after a lot more stairs, that was our next stop.

4:39 And I was there just in time for the next set of “changes”.

4:43 For British folks a bit older than me,

4:44 the basics of bell-ringing were just kind of…general knowledge.

4:48 Of course everyone knew how church bells worked.

4:50 The idea of bells and bell ropes, and it being dangerous if you got it wrong,

4:55 that didn’t need any explanation, to the point where it was a comedy trope.

4:58 1960s slapstick police comedy,

5:00 Carry On Constable showed a bungling policeman pulling on the sally,

5:04 the fluffy bit of the bell rope, and being hoisted up into the rafters.

5:07 No!

5:08 (bell chiming) And 1980s sitcom ’Allo ’Allo,

5:13 set in France in the Second World War, had a scene where the comedy villains,

5:17 Gestapo officers disguised as monks… …it was the 80s…

5:21 …they also end up dangling from the bell ropes.

5:24 No-one had to explain what those ropes were or even what bell-ringing was.

5:28 It was assumed the audience would understand.

5:30 Both of those scenes are wildly inaccurate, by the way, for two reasons: first,

5:34 as soon as the bell rope started to pull you up,

5:36 you’d let go, probably before your feet even left the ground.

5:39 If for some reason you clung on, you might be pulled up by the rising rope,

5:43 but then you would come back down.

5:45 Unless, of course, there was a ceiling,

5:48 like there is in the Worcester Cathedral ringing room,

5:50 in which case you’d break both your wrists

5:53 and probably your arms when you hit that ceiling.

5:55 The rope would carry on, giving you friction burns,

5:57 but you’d let go, fall back down and break your legs, or worse.

6:00 But that’s not funny,

6:01 and back when most people knew how the basics of bell-ringing worked,

6:05 being hauled up into the tower was a silly what-if punchline.

6:10 But this stuff is dangerous if you don’t treat it with respect.

6:13 But the second reason those scenes are inaccurate: most of the time,

6:17 those bell ropes are not live, and they’re never left unattended if they are.

6:21 You wouldn’t be able to just stumble

6:23 across a dangerous bell rope left abandoned.

6:25 And to explain that, I have this prop.

6:28 So, most of the time the bells are stored pointing down.

6:31 The rope is attached to this wheel,

6:33 which is attached to the bell, which can spin 360 degrees.

6:38 And remember, that bell weighs tonnes.

6:40 So, it’s not a case of pull it and it’ll ring.

6:42 Instead, it’s like pushing a kid on a swing.

6:45 You have to pull, and rock the bell a little,

6:48 and then pull again at the right time,

6:49 rock it a little bit more, again, and again, and again, and “ring the bell up”.

6:55 And eventually there’ll be enough energy in the system,

6:57 it’ll almost be doing a full revolution,

6:59 and it will click just into place on what’s called the ‘stay’.

7:03 When we went into the belfry, that’s where all the bells were,

7:06 on their stays, potential energy in the system, ready to go.

7:10 That’s when it’s dangerous.

7:11 With a slight pull on those bell ropes, tonnes of bell will start to swing,

7:15 and at that point, it’s going, the bell WILL turn, and the rope WILL come down.

7:20 The bell will swing past the centre point, the rope starts going back up,

7:24 and the clapper, the thing in the middle here,

7:27 that hits the bell, will get a ring.

7:29 Which is where we get the British phrase, “going like the clappers”.

7:32 But that bell is not gonna stop.

7:34 There’s only a little bit of friction in the system,

7:35 so it’ll reach the other side,

7:36 and like a kid on a swing, it WILL come back down again,

7:39 swing the other way, the clapper will hit the other side,

7:42 the bell will ring again, and so on, and so on, and so on.

7:45 The job of a bell-ringer is not like playing a piano or guitar:

7:48 it’s adjusting the timing of one part of a complicated system,

7:52 one bell, pulling on the rope just right

7:54 to add or subtract energy from the system,

7:56 to hold the bell just on its tipping point for a moment to slow it down,

8:00 or to pull harder to speed it up,

8:02 or to add enough energy that the bell will reach the stay...

8:05 and stop, but not hit it too hard, because that stay can be broken and that’s

8:09 a couple of hundred pounds in repair bills.

8:11 So, you know, no pressure.

8:12 Oh, and also, you have to watch what the other people are doing,

8:15 and kind of do mental arithmetic at the same time.

8:17 What Darren’s about to say will make sense in a moment.

8:20 (bells ringing) So, they were ringing call changes where one

8:27 person actually tells the bells when they have to swap.

8:31 But when you were upstairs, you were recording a method so,

8:34 they will just say ‘start’, and everybody knows what they have to do.

8:38 And they just do it.

8:39 -(sighs) By this point,

8:40 it was nearly time for the Sunday service downstairs in the cathedral, so,

8:44 Darren took up position as ringing master,

8:46 and after they started with the initial high-to-low scale, he said some numbers.

8:51 8 to 9!

8:53 Those numbers are instructions to swap bells in the current sequence.

8:57 10 to 11!

8:58 So, ten and eleven just swapped positions.

9:02 8 to 11!

9:04 And only bells that are currently next to each other in the sequence can swap.

9:08 If you wanted to move 1 to 4, you’d have to go through 2 and 3 first.

9:12 That’s the basic rules of traditional change ringing, which sound simple,

9:16 but the ringing master’s job is to run through a set of permutations,

9:20 either to fill the time available and return to the initial scale to finish,

9:23 or to run a particular sequence.

9:25 When Darren said “recording a method” earlier,

9:28 that’s where all the bell-ringers are working from memory.

9:31 Oh, and just to make it even more complicated: for special events,

9:35 bell-ringers might run through every possible permutation of some of the bells,

9:39 or all of the bells.

9:40 That could be maybe five thousand changes taking three or four hours.

9:45 It’ll be different for each church, but whatever it is,

9:47 the ringing master just has to remember the rules and the patterns,

9:51 and everyone has to keep in time for hours.

9:54 The plaques on the walls in that room,

9:56 they’re to commemorate times when that happened

9:58 for royal weddings or other major events.

10:00 This, however, was a regular Sunday, so,

10:02 they kept going until half past the hour,

10:04 all steady, each one following another, keeping time,

10:07 until Darren brought it back to the scale.

10:10 4 to 5!

10:11 (bells ringing) Stand!

10:17 (bells ringing) (bells reverberating) Alright, thanks very much, everyone.

10:28 I think I might know why there’s a big overlap in my audience and bell-ringers.

10:33 It’s physical but meditative.

10:35 It involves a little maths and paying attention and maybe some notation.

10:38 It’s hard work that can also get you into a flow state.

10:41 I talked to Chris, who’s been ringing bells at Worcester Cathedral for 33 years.

10:45 Four years ago, sadly, I got diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

10:49 So, ringing here helps me to slow down the rate of deterioration.

10:54 -Ah.

10:54 -Because I’m looking down the barrels

10:55 of being wheelchair-bound in about 15 years’ time.

10:58 And that scares the life out of me.

11:01 -Yeah.

11:01 So, by coming here, doing the physical exercise

11:05 and the mental maths to ring the methods,

11:07 it’s helping slow the deterioration down.

11:09 And it is physical work to pull the bells.

11:12 -It is.

11:12 It’s physical work.

11:13 It helps me stay active.

11:16 And when you’ve got a disease, it’s important to keep active as much as you can.

11:21 So, I go to the gym three times a week and I come up here.

11:23 And learning the mathematical sequences and memorising them

11:27 in your head helps to slow the rate of dementia,

11:31 which is part of Parkinson’s, down.

11:34 That is, yeah...it’s a scary thing to be looking at.

11:36 It’s a scary one.

11:37 I’m only 53, so I still want to be ringing here in 10 years’ time.

11:41 The service down in the cathedral would last about an hour,

11:44 and I had until the end of it to learn the ropes

11:47 well enough that they’d let me be part of an actual, brief, ring.

11:51 We couldn’t disturb the church service with bells, of course, but that’s fine...

11:54 because Worcester Cathedral is one of very

11:56 few places in the world with a simulator.

11:58 So, now all I have to do is get good enough

12:02 in the next hour that they’ll let me on the actual bells.

12:06 We’ll see the simulator in just a moment, but first:

12:09 I’m really trying to avoid clickbait titles and thumbnails in this series,

12:13 but the temptation is always there.

12:15 I hope I’m on the right side of the line,

12:17 though, and when Ground News reached out to be a sponsor,

12:20 I jumped at the chance, because it feels like we’re trying to do similar things.

12:24 It can feel like a lot of the media is kinda broken right now.

12:28 Some stories get amplified, while other stories get buried,

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12:49 For example, just a few weeks ago, Google lost its final appeal against a €4.7

12:55 billion fine for abusing its market position with Android.

12:58 I’d missed that story entirely!

13:00 I caught it because of Ground News.

13:01 More than 250 sources reported on it.

13:04 Left-leaning sources tended to frame the fine as a win

13:07 for the EU and holding Big Tech to account;

13:08 right-leaning sources tended to frame it as heavy-handed overreach.

13:12 The feature I keep coming back to is the Blindspot feed,

13:15 which highlights things that are disproportionately

13:17 covered by one side of the political

13:19 spectrum so you can find stories that might be outside your bubble entirely.

13:23 Even if you do try to get your news from not-clickbait sources,

13:26 stories still end up being sent around

13:28 in group chats and posted to social media,

13:30 and they are going to flicker into your attention.

13:33 Having a subscription to Ground News means that I can stop and think:

13:36 is someone trying to enrage me here?

13:39 What's the context?

13:41 I’ve been using Ground News for a few months now,

13:43 and it’s still in the same place where

13:45 my thumb used to go to reflexively browse social media.

13:48 You can join me, and subscribe to Ground

13:49 News right now with 40% off their Vantage Plan,

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13:56 Okay.

13:57 Time for me to learn how to ring a bell.

14:00 The teaching room is below the ringing room and it is more or less a copy,

14:03 except that instead of the regular bells it has eight weighted dumb bells.

14:08 Dumb, meaning silent, which is offensive if it’s about a person today,

14:11 thanks mostly to Americans using it to mean “stupid”,

14:13 but a dumb bell is a silenced bell, a heavy weight spinning round,

14:18 and yes, that’s probably why the weights

14:20 people use in the gym are called dumbbells.

14:22 Bell-ringing is everywhere in English!

14:25 Anyway, Darren set one dumb bell into the up position, rested it on the stay,

14:29 and tried to teach “how to safely ring a bell”

14:32 to someone with no upper body strength and poor hand-eye co-ordination.

14:36 So, to ring a bell, there are two strokes we call them.

14:40 -Okay.

14:40 -There’s the hand stroke, which is when you pull the sally,

14:43 this fluffy bit’s called the sally.

14:45 -Okay.

14:45 -And then there’s the backstroke, which is when you’re pulling on this bit.

14:49 So, if I just show you that… And now, a montage!

14:52 Two reasons: first, ’cos I didn’t turn the microphones on for this.

14:55 In the background there is a very loud and very large ticking clock,

14:59 which will actually be important again later in this road trip series,

15:01 so, I thought I’d show it to you now.

15:03 But second, because it is just a huge

15:05 amount of practice and getting the muscle memory right.

15:08 So, first, I learnt the backstroke.

15:12 -Too much?

15:12 -A bit too hard, yeah.

15:16 -Whoa.

15:16 -So you touched the stay that time.

15:18 -Okay.

15:19 That’s bad.

15:19 -It’s okay.

15:20 You didn’t bang it.

15:22 So just go a bit further up an inch or so.

15:25 Okay, we’ll go again.

15:26 It’s not about pulling hard on the rope.

15:28 You don’t have to pull hard.

15:29 It’s about timing, about understanding what’s going on above your head,

15:33 and adding or subtracting energy.

15:35 The ringing sound you can hear in the footage, by the way,

15:38 is from the laptop just behind, it can’t be heard outside the room.

15:41 We are not bothering the churchgoers below.

15:43 Not putting much energy into the system here.

15:45 -No.

15:45 -Just a little bit to just pull it.

15:47 Which is why you can see ringers in their 80s and 90s ringing bells

15:53 because they know how to do it super efficiently and not fighting against it.

15:58 After fifteen minutes of that, it was time to learn

16:01 the other half of the movement: pulling the sally.

16:03 This part here, once you pull it, it is gonna go no matter what.

16:08 -Right.

16:08 -So you have to let go, otherwise you’ll be pulled up with it.

16:11 -Oh.

16:12 Right, because the bell is currently up?

16:15 Yeah, it’s currently set like that.

16:16 Once you pull the sally, it tips it over the balance point.

16:19 -Whatever happens...

16:20 -It’s going.

16:20 -That’s going?

16:21 -Yeah.

16:21 -Do not hold onto the sally.

16:23 -No.

16:23 The simulator isn’t quite as dangerous as the actual bells,

16:26 but it can still hurt you if you’re not sensible.

16:29 So, the next thing is to try to catch the sally.

16:32 You can’t catch it when it’s on the way down.

16:34 You have to wait for the bob, it will rise a bit.

16:37 That’s the point you can catch it and then you pull it again.

16:40 This was difficult.

16:42 Not physically, just mentally trying to keep a steady pace,

16:45 trying to keep the system in balance and in time.

16:48 After ten minutes or so, Darren was just holding the sally, putting in no force,

16:52 and I was catching it… but he was still holding it just in case.

16:56 And he had to keep reminding me to keep my eyes forward, not up.

17:00 Looking up doesn’t help, and when you’re actually ringing,

17:02 you need to look at the other people to keep precise time.

17:06 You’re also kind of looking at all the other ringers around you.

17:09 Oh, of course.

17:11 Oh, why does that feel a bit like juggling?

17:13 -Yes.

17:13 -I feel like… There’s a similarity there.

17:17 Jugglers have precise timing, physical skills,

17:20 patterns that change over time and can have notation!

17:24 And also overlap massively with mathematics nerds.

17:27 If you enjoy juggling, you may enjoy bell-ringing, and vice-versa.

17:32 Next job: put everything together.

17:34 It went well for a little while… and then I got a bit startled.

17:38 -(gasps) -Send it up.

17:39 Oh, I nearly got tangled in that rope there.

17:41 -You’re okay.

17:42 -I didn’t get...whoa.

17:43 No, hold on, hold on.

17:44 Give me a second.

17:45 Give me a second, sorry.

17:46 I’ll give it back to you.

17:48 -That’s okay.

17:49 That, there were just two things that worried me in sequence there.

17:52 -Yeah, go on?

17:53 -One is, I felt that snatch up.

17:54 -Yeah.

17:55 -And the other was, the rope, very briefly,

17:57 now I don’t think it’s dangerous, but the rope went like that.

18:02 -Right, yeah.

18:03 And I just had this moment of, am I

18:05 going about to get pulled up into the rafters here?

18:06 -No, that’s fine.

18:07 -Okay.

18:07 It can spook you when you’re not used to it.

18:09 Yeah.

18:10 One final thing to learn: how to hold the bell on its balance point.

18:14 Pause here… Yeah, you can hold that for quite a while, can’t you?

18:20 You can, yeah, and sometimes you do.

18:21 You have to wait there for ages.

18:23 -Yeah.

18:23 -When you just get to that balance point, it’s quite happy there.

18:26 -But if the bell is coming towards you… -You’ve got to go.

18:29 -You’ve got to go.

18:30 Yeah.

18:30 Do not try and push it back up.

18:33 (laughter) The weird thing is:

18:34 you can’t pause the bell if you haven’t pulled hard enough before.

18:38 It feels like if you want to stop, you should pull less, but no:

18:41 the way to stop is to pull just enough

18:43 that the bell can rest on the stay without breaking it.

18:47 Pulling less means it’ll just start swinging back and forth.

18:51 And then you’ve got to think of something very quickly...

18:53 -Right!

18:53 -...and you can’t wait.

18:55 (laughter) Yeah.

18:56 So, just pull harder is the rule on the next...

18:58 But if you pull too hard, you’re gonna hit the stay.

19:01 -Yeah, that’s right.

19:02 -Right.

19:03 But if you can’t pause,

19:04 then you need to pull on the next possible opportunity a bit harder.

19:08 -Right.

19:08 Okay.

19:09 -Whichever stroke it is.

19:11 -Alright.

19:11 -So, shall we leave it there?

19:12 -I’ll leave it with you.

19:14 The last challenge of the day, then: with about an hour’s training,

19:17 I joined the bell-ringers for an attempt with the real bells.

19:20 If I got this wrong, half of Worcester would hear it.

19:23 That’s not an exaggeration.

19:24 It’s about 50,000 people who live and work within the range of those bells.

19:29 So, look, I know this isn’t gonna be great.

19:32 If I get one or two rings in and don’t panic, I’ll be happy, but… wish me luck.

19:36 Eight bell-ringers.

19:37 One of which is me, with Darren ready to step in, the moment

19:41 I look like I’m not in control of two tonnes of metal above me.

19:44 He’s always going to grab the sally, just for safety,

19:47 but he won’t actually pull on it unless he needs to.

19:49 I’m sweating and I’m not entirely sure that’s the climb up the stairs.

19:53 You’ll be fine.

19:54 We’re gonna be watching John, ’cos we want to ring just after him every time.

19:59 Yep.

19:59 John in the yellow or John in the blue?

20:01 -Number two.

20:01 -John in the blue, okay.

20:03 (gasps) Okay.

20:07 -All ready?

20:07 -So, we look to them.

20:09 I will be on the sally with you.

20:11 -Okay.

20:11 Wait, I’ve got to also…okay.

20:13 So, look, and we’ll pull just after John.

20:15 You can still face the middle.

20:17 Okay.

20:17 I’ve gotta keep both in...okay.

20:20 Pressure on.

20:21 50,000 people listening whether they want to or not.

20:25 Ready?

20:25 Look to the treble.

20:26 She’s going.

20:27 She’s gone.

20:29 (bells ringing) No, I’ve lost that immediately.

20:33 That’s on you.

20:36 -So, you…um, stand!

20:37 -Yeah.

20:38 I...

20:40 You just stopped for a minute.

20:41 -I just stopped.

20:42 I just had…yeah, that did not go well.

20:44 (bells stop) That’s alright, we’ll try again.

20:46 Sorry, folks!

20:47 That was me just having a bit of a panic.

20:49 It was the fun of hearing all the other bells ringing with you.

20:52 Yep, okay, so… So, do that, but don’t…just don’t stop.

20:56 Just don’t stop.

20:57 Don’t stop.

20:58 That’s a…yeah.

20:58 I don’t have an explanation for that other than fumbling under the pressure.

21:03 My hand wasn’t quite in the right place

21:04 and I didn’t have the muscle memory to correct it.

21:06 Attempt number two.

21:08 Ready, look to the treble.

21:10 Going, gone.

21:13 Keep looking at number two.

21:15 (bells ringing) -So, pause a bit more.

21:19 -Yep.

21:20 You can tell on the wide shot, my timing is completely out.

21:23 I’ve lost track of when and how hard to pull

21:25 and the bell is doing the timing for me.

21:28 I’m gonna hand that to you.

21:30 That’s yours.

21:30 -Okay.

21:31 -(exhales) (bells ring, one silent) Stand.

21:36 So, that was fine, but you weren’t going up enough at backstroke.

21:40 Right, so, I needed to put more power into that?

21:42 Um, you just weren’t pausing at backstroke.

21:45 -Not pausing.

21:45 -So you were pulling hard there, but then just bringing it back down like this.

21:49 You didn’t do the pause.

21:50 -I didn’t do the pause.

21:51 Pause.

21:52 So wait...

21:52 (one bell rings) and then bring it down.

21:56 -Okay.

21:57 It wasn’t quite three strikes and I’m out,

21:59 but I did not want to outstay my welcome.

22:02 This is my last attempt.

22:03 Thank you, folks.

22:04 Thank you for letting a novice on your bells.

22:06 -So, good pull on the first sally...

22:08 -Yep.

22:08 ...and make sure you’re up and pause at backstroke...

22:11 -Okay.

22:11 -...and watch John.

22:12 -Okay.

22:13 -Okay?

22:14 Ready?

22:14 Look to the treble.

22:16 Going… gone.

22:17 (bells ringing) Can you see the grin on my face?

22:24 Just for a moment, just briefly, I had it.

22:28 (bells ringing) -Not quite.

22:32 -Stand.

22:33 (bells ringing) It’s on you.

22:35 (laughter) (bells reverberating) -There you go.

22:39 -Thank you so much, folks.

22:40 -That was an absolute privilege.

22:42 -Very impressive.

22:42 -(laughter) -Good.

22:45 If you’re in England, or a few other parts of the world,

22:47 and you’d like to try bell-ringing,

22:48 your local church is almost certainly looking for volunteers,

22:52 and you don’t have to be religious.

22:53 Next time, or right now on Nebula: a trip to a World Heritage Site

22:58 with an angle finder and a slightly unhinged conspiracy theory.