The journey to Lourdes begins with pilgrims flying from Liverpool John Lennon Airport and ten coaches of youg people leaving on a twenty-seven hour journey to work with the sick pilgrims.
Coach 4 celebrated early morning Mass in St John's church, Wigan and Coach 8 in St Mary's church, Leyland.
Lucy Newton from
Coach 5 writes;
After a hectic week of people dropping out, loosing a staff member and another staff member on crutches, we are finally on our way to Lourdes after a great mass at St Joseph's in Chorley. After saying our goodbyes to family, friends and the rest of the parish, having given them prayer books and a single decade of rosary beads (made by the young people on the coach), we set off earlier than scheduled. For the past four years coach 5 have been the last coach to arrive in Lourdes from Liverpool Archdiocese. Hopefully this year we will not miss the ferry and arrive in Lourdes ahead of some other coaches.
Though the journey is going smoothly there have already been some travelling errors by some members of the coach. To name and shame: Laura Broadstock, Jon Berry, Jamie Adamson, Rachel Miller, Anna Gilbertson and Mazza Gazza are all wearing jeans. For a 27 hour journey jeans are not ideal. However the biggest error of all, Sean O'Sullivan has forgotten his pillow. What a nightmare!
Meanwhile Mike Meadows from the
St Frai Team says:
Today the St Frai team, which I am part of for this year's pilgrimage, met at St Peter and St Paul's Church in Kirkby to begin our Lourdes Pilgrimage of 2012. Assembling at 7.15 am, we swiftly packed the coach and headed to Wigan (my second home!) to pick up our over 18's friends from Coach 4. Anticipating a the long journey ahead, the interaction on the journey began early, with plenty of catching up with those we had not seen for a while, or in my case attempting to forge new friendships, on a new coach for Lourdes 2012.
The journey seemed to progress extremely quickly, and before we knew it we were stopping at Toddington Services, near Northampton, to meet up with our coach drivers for the rest of the journey, Margaret and Phil. The rest of Friday's journey continued with plenty of activity on Twitter, as each coache tweeted celebrities, and each other in an attempt to forge further friendships and interest in our Pilgrimage. Notable retweets and messages across the Pilgrimage came from wrestler Shaun Michaels, footballer Gaizka Mendieta, and boxing promoter Frank Maloney - himself a former Lourdes pilgrim, as he informed us via the social networking site.