WHEN Merius McKeown applied to work in the UK 10 years ago she had never heard of Bolton and thought she would be living in London.

She arrived in the town, alongside 23 other nurses from the Philippines, in 2002 to fill a shortfall of nurses.

Now aged 41, and with a Bolton-born husband and a five-year-old daughter, Mrs McKeown says she loves life in Bolton.

And despite her initial struggle with the broad Bolton accent and the weather, which was a shock after the tropical heat of the Philippines, she says she has never looked back.

Mrs McKeown was one of 1,000 nurses flown to the UK from the Philippines to help the NHS, which was facing a national shortage of staff.

Of the 24 who came to Bolton, 19 are still working at the Royal Bolton Hospital.

They keep in regular contact and meet up every year to celebrate their anniversary This year was particularly poignant for them as they celebrated a decade of life in Bolton with a party at Farnworth Veterans Club.

Mrs McKeown, a theatre nurse, started work on a medical ward, which is where she met her husband James, who works in A&E.

When she arrived in Bolton, Mrs McKeown, had already spent a few years working away from the Philippines in Saudi Arabia and says she believes this helped her to acclimatise to a different culture quickly.

She added: “Everyone is settled here now and have their own places and their own lives and are very happy.

“At first it was totally strange. I think the climate change was the strangest.

“We arrived in March and then it was really cold and none of us were used to the cold weather. The accent was also hard to understand.

“The first time I worked on a ward I found it really difficult to understand.

“The medical terms were just the same so that was okay, but when the other nurses were talking quickly, I could hardly grasp what they were saying.”