Experience English: Stories of the Land
Our English immersion hiking holiday in Scotland
Discover the Scottish landscape – timelessly
A 10-day English immersion holiday exploring the stories held in Scotland’s landscapes — through hiking, local people, nature, history, art, music and storytelling, including three days inside a Scottish walking festival.
Experience English: Stories of the Land is a variation of our main Experience English holiday.
This special 10-day version combines four days of Experience English with three days taking part in a local walking festival.
On festival days, you join other walkers on expert-led walks through the Perthshire landscape as a festival-goer, not as an English learner.
Find out more about the experiences, language support, food, places and people that can become part of an Experience English holiday:
→ Explore Experience English — our original English coaching holiday
2027 Dates & Availability
Experience English: Stories of the Land is a special 10-day holiday, running from 5–14 May 2027.
- Arrival: Wednesday 5 May — by 5pm
- Experience English: 4 days
- Walking Festival: 3 walking days
- One full day off during the festival
- Departure: Friday 14 May — morning
The 2027 festival walks are released at the end of February. We’ll choose and book three walks to suit your walking level and interests.
There are only three places on this holiday, and some festival walks book up quickly. If you’re interested, join the waiting list and we’ll email you when the 2027 walks are released.
Accommodation
You’ll have your own private bedroom with one of our carefully selected homestay hosts in Crieff. Your homestay is part of the Experience English experience, extending your connection with everyday Scottish life beyond the time we spend together.
Pricing
Experience English: Stories of the Land is £1,950 per person, per week, plus local homestay accommodation at £25 per person, per night.
A Hiking and English Immersion Holiday in Scotland
This is a small-scale, 10-day holiday for people who want to hike in Scotland, experience a real local event and use their English as part of the adventure.
Three days are spent taking part in a local walking festival, joining other festival-goers on guided hikes through the Perthshire landscape. Walks are often led by people with specialist knowledge of nature, landscape, wildlife or local history, giving you much more than a route to follow.
Before the festival, we help you feel ready to step into that experience in English — with the language and confidence to understand your guide, chat with other walkers, ask questions and join in. Once you’re on the walks, you’re there as a festival-goer, not as an English learner.
The Landscape Doesn’t End When the Walk Does
Walking is one way into a landscape. Art, music and stories give us others.
Across our four Experience English days, we’ll keep finding different ways to explore the land and the stories held within it.
That might mean hearing about the return of beavers and the changes they bring to a landscape. We might visit a farm, using agritourism as a way to understand how land is worked, cared for and changing. We could meet an artist or maker, visit an exhibition, hear live Scottish music, follow a local story, or spend time with someone whose work gives us a completely different way of seeing a place.
→ About Agritouram on Blue Noun Language Holidays
Land runs deeply through Scottish music and storytelling, too. Songs carry stories of particular places, people, work, movement, loss and belonging. Artists notice and interpret landscapes in ways that can make us look again at somewhere we’ve just walked through.
→ Why Meet Artists on Your English Holiday in Scotland?
Exactly what we encounter will depend on what’s happening locally, what opportunities arise and what interests the group.
All our holidays build stories. This one is particularly rich in them.
The landscape stays at the centre. We simply keep changing the way we encounter it.
Experience English: Stories of the Land is for people who enjoy hiking, prefer local experiences over packaged itineraries, and want the rare opportunity to step into a Scottish walking festival and belong there for a few days — walking alongside local people and other festival-goers, sharing the landscape, conversations, stories and discoveries that happen along the way.
Very small group: a maximum of three participants.
Experience English: Stories of the Land will be largely based in Perthshire.
The Drovers’ Walking Festival is an annual event based in Crieff and open to everyone. Most walks explore Perthshire, although some venture further into the hills and landscapes once travelled by Scotland’s cattle drovers.
For local people, the festival is a rare opportunity to discover paths, places and stories that can be difficult to access without specialist knowledge. If Scotland is new to you, it is an invitation into some of its best, most hidden landscapes — guided by people who know what you’re walking through.
Only Three Places
The 2027 Walking Festival programme will be released at the end of February, and some of the most interesting walks can book up quickly.
Experience English: Stories of the Land has a maximum of just three guests.
If you’re even slightly interested in joining us, get on the waiting list. When the festival programme is released, we’ll email everyone on the list with the holiday details and the available walks, so you’ll have the chance to choose before we open the remaining places more widely.
We’ll help you choose three walking days that suit your walking level and interests.
Why English Feels More Comfortable Here
Walking gives conversation room to happen.
You don’t have to sit opposite someone and find something to say. You’re moving together, looking at the same landscape, listening to the same guide and experiencing the same weather, discoveries and challenges. Conversation can start, stop and start again without feeling awkward.
And these aren’t encounters created for language learners. For three days, you’re part of a real walking group, spending hours alongside people who have chosen the same walk as you. You already have something in common.
There is plenty to talk about, too. Festival walks are often rich in nature, history, landscape and local knowledge. Questions aren’t exercises invented to make you speak English. They’re questions you actually want answered.
That combination — time, shared experience, interesting people and something worth talking about — creates unusually good conditions for English to come naturally.
£1,950 GBP
Course price per person, per week
Local homestay accommodation £25 per person, per night.
The Story of this Holiday
Crieff is where it is — and what it is — because of its past.
For centuries, this was one of Scotland’s most important market towns, shaped by the cattle trade that brought people, animals, money, language and politics together each autumn. Drovers walked cattle south from the Highlands and islands to Crieff, following routes that still cross the surrounding hills, glens and valleys.
One of those drovers was Rob Roy MacGregor. He drank in local inns. He knew these roads. His story, like many others, is part of the fabric of the town rather than a tale set apart from it.
Crieff has also known violence and upheaval. It was burned during the Jacobite period, and rebuilt. The movement of people through this landscape — for trade, for survival, for power — has left marks that are still readable if you know where to look.
The Drovers’ Tryst Walking Festival exists because this history still matters here.
Blue Noun founder Ruth Pringle is a Trustee of the festival, helping this small, locally run event reach new walkers and carry its stories forward. Bringing international guests into the festival is part of that: new people, new conversations and new perspectives are genuinely welcome.
The festival brings people into the landscape through walking — not as spectators, but as participants. Routes take you into places that can be difficult to discover without local or specialist knowledge, and walks are often led by people who can interpret what you are moving through — its nature, history, wildlife, landscape and changing use.
If you want to discover Scotland through walking, there is no better way than this festival: not by standing outside the story, but by moving through the land that made it.
What to Know About Our English Holidays
Before you decide if you want to book a Zoom chat, you may find it helpful to explore how we design our English holidays and support your experience.
→ Real-World English
How English develops through lived experience, conversation, and everyday moments — not classroom performance.
→ Discover the Mix that Makes a Blue Noun Holiday Unique
A simple visual diagram showing how activities, schedule and support combine across a week.
→ What’s Included
Practical details, support, and what your holiday fee covers.
Could I Just Book the Walking Festival Myself?
Absolutely.
The Drovers’ Tryst Walking Festival is open to everyone. You can book your own walks, arrange accommodation in or around Crieff and come along independently. We’d love to have you.
Experience English: Stories of the Land is for people who want something different around that experience.
Blue Noun gives you time before the festival to prepare for using your English in the walking groups, a local homestay and base in Crieff, and an Experience English programme that continues after the walks — giving you space to talk about what happened, work with language that challenged you, and follow the stories, ideas and interests the festival has opened up.
If you’re wondering what difference that support can make, I wrote a blog about exactly this question. It compares taking part in a local Scottish experience independently with taking part as part of a Blue Noun language holiday:
A Simple Next Step
If you're wondering whether this holiday will suit you, the next step is a short Zoom call.
It's a chance for us to meet, for you to ask questions and tell me what you're hoping for from both your English and your time in Scotland. This isn't a language test or assessment.
Blue Noun holidays are unusual, and the conversation gives us both a chance to make sure this is the kind of experience you're looking for.
Afterwards, if you're joining us, we'll move to WhatsApp. I'll stay in touch as you prepare — helping with travel plans, what to bring and practical questions, while learning more about your interests so I can begin shaping the week around you.
If this sounds like the kind of English experience you've been looking for, let's talk it through.
Book a Zoom call to explore your holiday
If This Week Isn’t the Right Fit
This is one themed version of our Experience English holiday.
If the dates, activities or particular focus of this holiday aren’t right for you, another Experience English holiday may be a better fit.
→ Explore Experience English: Autumn Moments
Or visit our holiday calendar to explore Experience English holidays month by month.
For an overview of how walking and time outdoors are woven through our holidays, read:
→ Walking on Our English Language Holidays
→ Another Local Festival, Another Experience English
The Drovers’ Tryst isn’t the only Crieff festival we build into Experience English. In October, we work with the Crieff Food & Drink Festival, creating a specialist English programme for international food & drink professionals.
Different festival, different professional focus — but the same idea: join a real local event as an international guest, with Blue Noun building the language learning around the experience.
