We all met at St Joseph's Church in Blantyre around 9am and loaded our cases onto the bus. All 36 of us gathered for 10am mass in the Church and got a blessing from Bishop Devine.

In the Blantyre sunshine, our bus got a great send off from the parishioners as we started our journey around 11am.

Greedily claiming a seat at the back of the bus (because it had the best leg room!) we started to decorate the inside with Scottish flags and bunting!

Once the bus looked suitably Scottish we started to get into the holiday spirit with plenty of cheesy 80s music and excited chat of the trip ahead.

After a quick pit stop to refresh our batteries, we arrived at the ferry port in Hull around 4:30pm.

Once we got through passport control, we were led onto the giant Pride of York P&O ferry and given a talk through all of the boat rules.

An hour later and we had walked around the ferry seeing what kind of entertainment and bars they had to offer. Our cabins were situated on the red deck, which was on the same floor as The Sunshine Show Bar and the Casino. Upstairs on the blue deck there was a cinema and a piano bar.

A quick change of clothes and we were off downstairs to the green deck for dinner, hijacking a whole section of the buffet dining area with our group, we got stuck into a tasty three course meal with one or two drinks to wash it down.

Leaving the green deck, our group split up and we went in search of ways to kill time during our 16 hour overnight ferry trip to Zeebrugge. We didn't have to look far before myself and four other guys found ourselves in the Sunshine Show Bar where the kids were being entertained. About to make a sharp move for the exit, we heard the DJ announce a game of bingo at 8:30pm and we promptly turned back and ordered a round of drinks from the bar.

Bingo!? I hear you say; you've never seen a group of guys so excited!

As the excitement died down and the realization that we didn't win finally sunk in, we split and I went to watch a few of the guys play roulette; not a patch on the bingo!

Eager to explore more of the ferry nightlife, I made my way up to the piano bar and found more than half of our group were up there drinking and listening to the gifted young pianist who was keeping the World Youth Day group entertained.

A rendezvous was announced for 11pm, where we all assembled on the lower deck for some prayer and quiet reflection on the week ahead.

After the prayers, we found ourselves back inside the piano bar, which gave everyone an ideal opportunity to relax and chat and get to know each other before the disco started at midnight in the Sunshine Show Bar.

In no time we had the whole bar up on the dance floor singing and dancing along to Amarillo and classic Scottish hits like The Proclaimers - 500 Miles and Letter from America!

By the end of the first day, the group had bonded brilliantly and the true spirit of World Youth Day was starting to shine through.