One of my absolute favourite parts of Reach is picking up students from the airport on arrival day. Yes, it means waking up at 4am, but nothing beats meeting excited students and welcoming them to Cambridge (and England), often for their first visit. And this arrivals day was no different! England has been going through a heat-wave (by our standards anyway), so it was a lovely warm morning as we drove through the countryside to Heathrow. When we arrived, we headed straight for a café and got a large coffee before keeping an eye on the Arrivals board. Seeing that the first flight had landed, we waited by the doors, very visible with our Reach signs, and bright orange t-shirts. We repeated this throughout the morning, gradually gathering more and more students from all over the world. It was so lovely to see everyone making friends almost immediately, chatting away about their courses and what they were looking forward to – any initial nerves very soon
turned into excitement. On the way back to Cambridge, there was the usual glee that the driver was sat on the ‘wrong’ side of the coach, and that we were driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, and gradually more and more requests of ‘Are we there yet?’ When we arrived at Downing College, I asked one of the students what they thought: ‘It’s even better than I imagined!’ they said.
Punts on the River Cam
