Written by by Annie Fuller
On Monday 13th October a group of 29 Holy Name parishioners and friends met up outside St Pancras Station in London, the start of an excellent 5 day holiday in Lille, France.
Lille is in northern France, 126 miles north east of Paris and only 9 miles from the Belgian border. It is a busy industrial town but much of the old town remains, with lots of cobbled streets and many Flemish buildings to be admired.
The train journey from London to Lille takes less than an hour and a half on Eurostar and we were all amazed at how close it is. On arrival in Lille we made our way to our hotel, the Grand Hotel Bellevue, a truly excellent hotel in the centre of town. After settling into our rooms we met up to have the first of our two evening meals together. The service and food at the restaurant were excellent.
We had 2 days in Lille when we were free to explore at our leisure. At breakfast it was lovely to see people joining together when they realised they wanted to visit the same attraction. This, to me, is one of the great things about our Parish holidays – everyone is welcome to join up with anyone and no one is left out.
Between us we visited: The Grand Place (just around the corner from our hotel), Lille Cathedral (it took 150 years to build and is and is an eclectic mix of Gothic and Modern architecture), The Citadel (a parkland on a hill giving wonderful views of Lille) and the Beaux Art Gallery (one of the largest outside Paris and was visited by most of the group).
On Wednesday the group went on an organised excursion visiting 2 war grave cemeteries including Tyne Cot near Passendale in Belgium. We then visited Malo-Les-Bains which is near Dunkirk. The day was rounded off with a wine tasting hosted by Philippe in one of his 3 shops. He certainly had a goodly supply of fine wines and good stories. We will all remember him describing one of the wines having an aroma of ‘cats pee”. One of Phillipe’s stories concerned the filming of Dunkirk which took place nearby. The production was about to come to a grinding halt as the spitfire planes had run out of fuel. Philippe and a friend came to the rescue by finding the specialist fuel needed by the planes. We are hoping to see him at the Holy Name Wine Club doing a tasting for us sometime in the future
When asked how members of the group felt about the Parish holiday one of our happy band said: “It was a great pleasure to spend time with such a lovely group of people” and another said: “Thanks to all the trippers and troopers who’ve made life happy and fun for the last few days”.
We made our way home, feeling lucky to have spent time together and now looking forward to the next trip.
As ever, we are most grateful to Anthony and Carmel for their planning, organising and wonderful care of us throughout the entire trip. Merci Beaucoup!
Sunday Mass: Saturday 4pm, Sunday 10am 