Surrey begins just beyond London: half an hour by train from the capital and you are already in the countryside. If you’re coming from Paris or Lille, the Eurostar drops you at St Pancras. That is what is special about this county — it is easy to reach, and you sleep in peace with the capital a ticket away.
Your English teacher is already in the kitchen when you come down in the morning: you sleep in their home and you learn in their home. The lesson happens one to one, in the living room or at the table once it’s cleared, and you are their only student. Nobody in this house will switch back to your own language.
Arriving easily, and leaving without stress
For a week’s stay, the airport is often the most tiring part of the trip. Here you have a choice: the Eurostar to St Pancras, or Heathrow and Gatwick, one close to the northern tip of the county, the other on its southern edge. The transfer leaves from one of these three points, and I tell you which once I know the house; it is paid on top of the stay. It is the kind of detail that changes a short week: the time you don’t spend travelling, you spend talking.
One thing to sort out when you book your ticket, not the day before: to enter the United Kingdom you need a passport and, unless you are a British or Irish citizen, the Electronic Travel Authorisation. The page about the ETA explains the steps.
In a village, people talk to you before you have time to think about it
This is where the countryside makes a difference for you. No speakers of your language to meet up with in the evening, and short distances: the bakery, the neighbour walking the dog, the cobbled street that climbs to Guildford Castle, the garden at Wisley. You ask where the eggs are, the answer comes too fast, you ask for it again — and the afternoon turns into conversation without anyone having prepared a lesson. The families are spread across the county, around Guildford, Dorking or a nearby town; I don’t name the village before I have found the person, but the address and what life in the house is like are in the profile you receive before you decide.
The lessons are one-to-one and you choose the intensity before you leave: from 10 to 30 hours a week, Monday to Friday, with a timetable you agree on the spot with your teacher. If you choose 10 hours, you book them together with activities or cultural visits, because at that pace most of it happens outside; these options are added to the stay. You have your own room and you eat at the table with the family, three meals included; a bathroom to yourself is an option in some houses: tell me if it matters to you and I’ll search accordingly. You arrive on Sunday and leave on Saturday, all year round, and if your train or flight arrives the day before, the night is added to the stay, meals included. The person who hosts you is the person who teaches you: a qualified teacher, in a home inspected before I suggest it to you.
Who comes to Surrey
Someone who works in English takes a week at 25 or 30 hours and arrives with the vocabulary of their job: the meetings, a presentation, the emails they have been putting off for months. Someone who hasn’t opened a textbook for twenty years starts again from their level, with nobody going faster than them, and with 15 hours their afternoons are free. Retired people tend to aim for spring, when the gardens open, and prefer a home to a hotel room. And when there is an exam at the end — Cambridge, IELTS, school-leaving exams — the teacher works on the format of the test.
If it is your child who is going, you first receive the family’s profile, and once there they are looked after day to day by their host family: in the evening, at the table, it’s the family who ask them how their day went. Until they turn 18, their afternoons go to activities or visits with their teacher — a walk in the Surrey Hills, a cinema — rather than to their phone in their room. Up to 16, the transfer is always in the proposal, unless you travel with them: on arrival they are met by the host family or by the driver in charge of the transfer, and I give you the name before they leave. And if they are not yet 13, an adult is with them at all times in the house.
How much it costs
A single rate covers the one-to-one lessons, the room and the three meals. In Surrey, the line that moves most is the transfer, because the houses aren’t all the same distance from the three arrival points: from some towns Heathrow is quicker, from others Gatwick. The rest depends on you — the number of hours, the length of stay, the activities and visits, the private bathroom. Travel and your spending there are not included, and I price the options in my proposal.
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.
Two questions I’m asked about Surrey
Can I go to London during the week?
Yes, and it is one of the reasons to come here: from the county’s main stations, Waterloo is half an hour away, with trains until the evening. A Sunday in the capital is easy, and so is a museum in the middle of the week. It does depend on the house: from some villages the station is within walking distance, from others you need a car or a bus. It is written in the profile I send you.
Do I need a car to live in an English village?
No. Here you do your shopping on foot, and that is where it all happens: the village shop, the pub, the bus stop where two people wait together. For what is further away — a garden, the climb to Leith Hill Tower, a nearby town — you go with your teacher, who knows the area. Just bring shoes that don’t mind mud: after rain, the North Downs paths stay muddy for a long time.
To get started
Two lines are enough for me: the dates you have in mind, where you are with your English — “I can only just about get by” is a useful answer — and what you would like to be able to do. If the stay is for your child, what helps me most is their age and whatever is worrying you. I look for the right person in Surrey and send you their profile with a proposal, which you can read in your own time before confirming. The contact page is there when you want to go ahead.
