Almost every ringer in the country learns Plain Bob first. It is the gateway method: simple enough to grasp in an evening, structured enough that once you have it, a great deal of other ringing suddenly makes sense.
If you are staring at the blue line and it is not going in, this is the explanation most people find helpful.
Start with plain hunting
Before Plain Bob there is plain hunting. Your bell works steadily from the front of the row to the back and then steadily home again, moving one place each change. Out, out, out, out, then back, back, back, back. Nothing else.
On five bells it takes ten changes to hunt out and home, and then you are back where you started. If that were all there was, the ringing would repeat forever after ten rows. Which would be dull.
The dodge that makes it a method
Plain Bob solves that with one addition. At the point where the treble returns to lead, the other bells make a small adjustment rather than simply carrying on:
- The bell that would lead again instead makes second's place — it stays in second for two blows
- The bells behind it dodge — they swap with a neighbour, then swap back
That one adjustment shifts everyone's starting position for the next lead. So the next ten rows are different from the last ten. Repeat, and you work through a whole series of different sequences before finally arriving back in rounds.
Why it is called a "plain course"
Ring Plain Bob Doubles straight through with no calls and you get a plain course: forty changes, and then you are back to rounds. That is the whole method, and it is what a new ringer learns first.
Wanting more than forty changes is where the conductor comes in.
Bobs and singles
A bob is a call shouted by the conductor that alters what some bells do at that lead end. It knocks the pattern out of its loop so the ringing carries on into sequences you would not otherwise reach. A single does something similar but affects fewer bells.
With bobs called at the right moments you can extend Plain Bob Doubles to 120 changes, or 240, or as far as a quarter peal at 1,260. The method has not changed. The calls have simply redirected it.
This is also why "Bob!" shouted in a tower means something quite specific, and why we sell a t-shirt about it.
Doubles, Minor, Triples, Major
Plain Bob scales. The rules stay the same; only the number of bells changes:
- Plain Bob Doubles — five changing bells, the usual starting point
- Plain Bob Minor — six
- Plain Bob Triples — seven
- Plain Bob Major — eight
More bells means more dodging positions and a longer course, but if you can ring Doubles you already understand Major. You just have further to travel.
The three things that catch people out
- Counting places instead of listening. Counting works until it doesn't. Ringers who last learn to hear where they are.
- Losing the treble. The treble plain hunts throughout and tells you when each lead ends. Watch it and the structure appears; lose it and you are guessing.
- Panicking after a bob. A bob changes your next move, not the method. Everything after it is still Plain Bob.
When it finally clicks
There is a specific evening, usually a few months in, when you stop reciting the line and simply ring it. Ringers remember that evening. It is worth marking.
Our Plain Bob collection carries the Doubles, Minor and Triples lines on mugs, coasters and shirts — the sort of thing that gets handed over after a first quarter peal.