Chapel Choir in Belgium

Chapel Choir at Brussels Cathedral

Chapel Choir at Brussels Cathedral

During the 2008 Easter holidays, the Chapel Choir have been touring Belgium.

The journey there wasn’t uneventful. We discovered en-route to Folkstone that there were severe delays in the Channel Tunnel, and we were looking at upto being seven hours late, until we were able to transfer to a ferry from Dover, which was just an extra part of the adventure (and a first for a number of the children!). We arrived at Ghent Youth Hostel after midnight local time and were soon asleep!

The first full day featured a visit to the Castle of the Counts in Ghent, with good views of the city and a devious torture exhibition, which we graded according to the number of bad marks the prisoners might have received! Next on the tour was St Baaf’s cathedral, with the famous Van Eyck ‘Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’ Altarpiece. After time for lunch, we headed for St Michael’s church to rehearse. We sang in the Choir loft at the west end of the church, the concert went very well and the acoustic was generous. 

Back to the hostel for tea and then out to a bowling alley for the evening. The regular bowling club members were practising and it was amazing to see how skilled you could become!

On the next day, we set off for Brussels, to visit a fascinating museum of musical instruments, each of which could be heard through special headphones as you walked around. After a quick walk to Brussels Cathedral and lunch, we rehearsed for the second of the two concerts. A decent organ, a warm church, and the arrival of the Chapel Choir supporters’ club, which included several parents and a surprise appearance by the Kirk family, were all appreciated by the children, who responded splendidly and were in fine voice. All too quickly, we were back on the coach, back to Ghent, and time for some shopping, a waffle or ice cream (special Australian variety), and a boat trip along the canals.

After tea, the talent show was most entertaining, though Harry Potter swept the floor to win the prizes, both a spoken fugue improvised by the sixth form girls, and a distilled Chamber of Secrets performed by the 4th form ‘Warner Brothers’.

The last day dawned to blue skies, as we had enjoyed throughout our time in Belgium, and after packing and loading the coach there was time for some final shopping and a much anticipated visit to a chocolate emporium, which did very good business  as a result! We were en route just after noon back to Calais, and this time the euroTunnel was back to normal so after we had handed over the fifth formers to meet up with the French trip, we were on the train, quickly back in Kent, and clear traffic allowed us to make good time back to school, with just a stop for tea at North Mimms service station.  

See some of the photos from the visit in this gallery. 

A video of the concert in Brussels Cathedral can be downloaded here. (Right-click and download this 125mb file; you will need a recent version of Quicktime as it uses the h264 Video Compression Codec)

A  couple of audio excerpts from the concerts can be heard later on this page as mp3 files. 


Tags: Chapel, Music, Prep, Visits
Look at the World 6.0 MB
Litany to the Holy Spirit 2.8 MB