Our Lourdes Pilgrimage...

I'm busy organising the events for this year's Parish Pilgrimage to Lourdes. As I've explained before, we organise all the stuff ourselves, as this really cuts down the costs. It also means that we don't get stuck in some of the less attractive chapels - the Chapel of St. Patrick, for example, looks like a store-cupboard... albeit a large one.

The "Service Planification" ask smaller groups to wait until April before making booking requests, so that they can organise the larger diocesan and other pilgrimages. This seems fair enough, but time flies, and I have suddenly realised that May has started, and I haven't heard anything...

Ooops.

I sent another email today, and I shall telephone in a day or two if there's no reply.

Exploring the official Lourdes website, I saw that they have "upgraded" their video links to the Grotto. Previously, the links were actually small snippets of video coverage which were repeated after two or three minutes. Now there is live coverage of the Grotto: I've got the 3:30pm recitation of the Rosary going on in the background. The link needs to be refreshed after about 10 minutes for some reason. During the Rosary, the camera changes round to show different shots, but it seems to be fixed the rest of the time.

This gave me an idea. When we are in Lourdes, I'll go to the grotto at a certain time and wave in the direction of the main camera. I don't know what time yet - it depends on what else we're doing - but I'll post the time on the blog. If you watch the live link at that time, you'll get to see me (and maybe a few others on the pilgrimage!)

Watch this space for details. In the meantime, if you want to have a look at the link to the grotto, click here.