The Drama of the Cracked Stay!

There was some drama at the practice night tonight as the stay on number 5 dropped out whilst it was being run by a new learner, Lee Fox. During the early stages of learning the new ringing learns to ring one  of the strokes at a time with the tutor keeping hold of the rope at all times. Whilst Lee was ringing the handstroke with Brian the stay dropped out (its not really supposed to do this!). Brian safely got the bell back down so the stay could be retrevied. Upon inspection we learnt that the stay had rotten through however it was impossible to see this on routine inspections.