The stone has been the same for centuries: a honey-coloured limestone that makes the rows of houses look warm under a grey sky. The Cotswolds are a region of villages, and here no town does the talking for you.
The village you visit depends on whose home you sleep in
That is what makes this region different, and it is written into the programme: among the cultural visits there is a guided tour of a village, and which one depends on where your teacher lives — Castle Combe, Bibury, Moreton-in-Marsh, or another of the seven the programme lists. Depending on the house, there may then be Blenheim Palace or Broadway Tower, a garden or an arboretum, Tewkesbury Abbey, Stratford-upon-Avon, or a rowing boat on the river. These are options: they are added to the stay and paid separately, and your teacher takes you. Stratford-upon-Avon is on that list as a visit, but it is also a destination in its own right: if that is where you want to sleep, there is the stay at a teacher’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon.
So the question isn’t “what is there to see in the Cotswolds” but “whose home will I land in” — and the profile answers it, before you decide.
Here, the language comes from one person
In an English city you hear the language a hundred times a day, ten seconds at a time. Here it is the other way round: you mostly talk with the person hosting you, and you talk for a long time — at the table, walking, in the village shop. It is slower and more demanding: nobody finishes your sentences for you, and to make yourself understood you have to get to the end of what you started to say.
The week, and the two formats
You have your own room in your teacher’s home and three meals a day with the family; the week runs from Sunday to Saturday, with one-to-one lessons from Monday to Friday, from ten to thirty hours, and the timetable is agreed with your teacher once you arrive. If you choose ten hours, you book them together with activities or visits. If you already have somewhere to stay, you can also take the lessons on their own: you go to your teacher’s home for the lesson hours, without the room or the meals. One thing to sort out before you buy your ticket: for the UK you need your passport and, unless you are a British or Irish citizen, an Electronic Travel Authorisation, which I explain step by step on the page about the ETA. Everything else is in how a stay at your teacher’s home works.
Your teenager in a village, not a city
They are the only student in the house, and it is their host family who looks after them day to day. Up to eighteen, lessons are booked together with activities or visits, so that the afternoon is spent outside with their teacher — the guided village walk, the abbey, the river — and not in their room. Up to sixteen the transfer is arranged, unless you travel with them, and before they leave I give you the name of the person who will be waiting for them. Under thirteen they are never alone in the house: there is always an adult with them.
The price of a week
A personalized stay according to your goals
Prefer to focus solely on individual lessons? Our "Lessons Only" programmes offer personalized tuition without accommodation at the teacher's home.
Stay at the teacher's home
- Full-board accommodation with daily one-to-one lessons
- Total immersion in the teacher's daily life with cultural activities
- Rates from £880 depending on the chosen programme
*With the 10-hour option, the week also includes General Activities and/or Cultural Visits.
⚠ For a student under 18 staying at the teacher's home, General Activities and/or Cultural Visits go with the lessons.
These are indicative starting prices and may vary.
The price is the standard UK rate. From there, the total depends on three things: how many hours of lessons you take, how many weeks you stay, and whether you add activities or visits.
Questions about the Cotswolds
Which village will I see?
The guided tour of a village is one of the cultural visits, and which village isn’t decided in advance: you choose it with your teacher among those you can reach from their home, depending also on what is open the week you come. The profile I send you says where they live, so you will know which corner of the region you will be in.
Where does the transfer leave from?
For the Cotswolds the arrival points are Birmingham and Bristol airports. The transfer is arranged — by the family, a driver or our local contact — and the profile says which of the two it leaves from; it is added to the stay and paid separately.
To get started
Tell me when you’d like to come and what you would like to be able to do; if you can’t name your level, “I understand it but I don’t speak it” is enough. If it is your child who is going, their age and whatever is worrying you matter too. I look at which teachers are free in the villages and I send you the profile of one person with the proposal: nothing is confirmed while you read it, and if something doesn’t suit you, I look elsewhere. You’ll find the other regions on our page about a language stay in England. If, as you read, you found yourself missing the sea, the same week exists in Cornwall, where the road ends in the water. The form is here.
