We're back on the road!

Happy New Year everyone!

Apologies for such a long gap between posts, the last few weeks of our first tour were fantastically frantic with the student team all over the country and arriving home at the wee hours on occasion which left little time for blogging.

You may have already heard through our other social networks that we saw an incredible 2468 visitors board the bus in the first six weeks which feels like an amazing achievement for us. The faith we've had in the bus has really paid off! We're being inundated with emails from people asking if the bus will come to their area, or telling us off for missing them out! We really did approach all the universities in the areas we were visiting so I'm sorry if we haven't been on your doorstep this time round....

Based on our 2468 new bus pals we have already decided to extend the RCN Student Bus tour!! The bus will now be with the RCN until the end of October meaning we'll be visiting the regions of the UK we haven't been to yet and hopefully taking the bus along to some big events such as the RCN International Research conference, London Gay Pride Parade, Glastonbury perhaps..... we have lots of ideas that we're working on so if you have any suggestions please so let us know! We're delighted at the response we've had so far.

So, today was our first 'proper' day back on the road since all the snow - we lost two weeks of our tour as the bus was snowed in and university and hospital sites either closed or told us it just wasn't safe enough to come. We're planning to reschedule all those dates so that you won't miss out.

We were at Coventry University today, right outside the Student Union and near the beautiful cathedral it was a great spot and we met some fantastic students and lecturers!! It was great to hear from more students that are really enjoying their courses and despite being only a few weeks in, telling us how passionate they are about their branches of nursing. We met a lot of health care support workers who were being sponsored to complete their training. Some told us how daunting it was to go back to the classroom and start thinking critically again - I hope they will persevere so that they can become like their colleagues just a couple of months ahead of them and loving the challenges being thrown at them!

We did find it incredibly cold today, we had two heaters on full blast and had the doors half closed for most of the day to try and keep some of the heat in. We need to remember our hats and big socks for the end of the week when we're in Birmingham! No seminars today but lots of students hung around for a chat about their career plans and/or confusion about which direction to go in.

On Wednesday the bus will be in Hereford with our colleagues from the West Midlands regional office at Hereford Acute Hospital, we hope you'll go along and see them if you can! Thursday and Friday the student team take over again with two days at the University of Birmingham, if any BCU students are about please come and say hello too - unfortunately we haven't found a suitable date for us to visit you yet but we're working on it!!

More soon...