Getting on the coach

The Arundel & Brighton Lourdes Pilgrimage 2010 began this morning as 62 members of the Youth Service Group (the Redshirts, of course!) 8 leaders, one co-ordinator and one Chaplain met at St. Bernadette’s in Crawley to begin their 24-hour journey to Lourdes.

The group met together at around 9am and started sorting out luggage and equipment. At 10.30 we celebrated Mass with Bishop Kieran and were officially commissioned for our work in Lourdes. When Mass was finished we packed up the coach – a huge job, even with the extra trailer – made some final checks, counted heads and set off on the long journey to the South of France.

It’s probably worth explaining at this point that 8 of the Redshirts and 2 of their leaders aren’t travelling with the main group. Alas, there were too many Redshirts this year for one coach to handle and so that group of 10 will be travelling with the main pilgrimage via coaches and the famous train. The entire Redshirt group, therefore, wont be all together until Friday morning. Since the person looking after yaab and the twitter updates is on the train rather than the coach (i.e. currently in Brighton, not northern France) you should expect news updates and photos to be focus more on that group until Friday.

Latest txt messages from the coach, however, are extremely informative, such as…

  • We are at Service stn. X

(honestly, you ask for txt updates and what do you get… :) )

For now – and until I can get anything more descriptive from the coach – here are some photos of this morning at St. Bernadette’s in Crawley…