Family English Holiday in Scotland
Experience Edinburgh’s festival season as a family — then slow down, explore Perthshire and make English part of the adventure.
This special August edition of Bring the Squirrels combines a private family English holiday with two independent days at Edinburgh’s famous summer festivals.
Spend the rest of the week with me in Perthshire, exploring, making things, getting outdoors and using English through the things your family is actually doing.
Then, on your Edinburgh days, you take over. Choose shows, navigate the city, order food, talk to people and follow whatever catches your family’s attention. You don’t need me standing beside you for English learning to be happening.
The result is a lovely rhythm: supported English and slower family adventures in Perthshire, followed by the excitement and independence of Edinburgh.
Both rhythms are part of the holiday.
Your English gets a workout moving between them.
August 2027 | Three Festival Edition Start Dates
The Bring the Squirrels: Edinburgh Festival Edition is available on just three start dates in 2027:
6 August 2027
13 August 2027
20 August 2027
You can book for one or two weeks.
For families travelling with children, I recommend two weeks if you can manage it. Getting a family to Scotland involves a fair amount of faff, and children often need time to arrive, settle in and find their rhythm. Two weeks gives us much more space for English, adventures, slower days and ordinary family downtime.
If you stay for two weeks, we don’t need to decide now whether you want two Festival weeks or just one. We can shape the balance nearer the time, once the Edinburgh programme is published and I know more about your family, your interests and what you’d most like to experience in Scotland.
Blue Noun can either welcome your family or run one of our other Experience English holidays — we don’t do both at the same time. Once a week is booked for another holiday, it is no longer available for a Festival Edition family booking.
There are only three possible start dates, so please enquire early if you have a preferred August week.
For Families Who Love City Buzz — and Countryside Quiet
This holiday is for families who don’t want to choose between the excitement of a great city and the space and calm of the Scottish countryside.
You might love the idea of throwing yourselves into Edinburgh in August — choosing shows, watching street performers, eating out and following the festival wherever it takes you — but also know that after a couple of days of crowds and excitement, your family will be ready for some space.
That’s what Perthshire gives you.
Rivers, woods, hills, wildlife, slower mornings and room to wander. Then, when you’re ready for another burst of city energy, Edinburgh is waiting.
You get both — and English runs through the whole experience.
Designed for two adults travelling with up to two children, with Blue Noun reserved privately for your family.
Your family meets each day at Blue Noun before heading out together for relaxed English experiences in nature, local parks, riversides, cafés, and family-friendly cultural spaces across Perthshire.
During the week, you’ll stay in a private self-catering flat with two bedrooms, giving your family space to rest, cook, and settle into a gentler rhythm between activities and festival days.
The holiday combines time outdoors, guided English support, and independent family time — including opportunities to explore the atmosphere of Edinburgh’s summer festivals at your own pace.
Edinburgh is approximately one hour from Dunblane by train, and Blue Noun is around 25 minutes away by car.
That means your family can step off the train and straight into the atmosphere of the festival — before returning later to quieter evenings, nature, and space to breathe in Perthshire.
On your Festival days, I help you get to the train and meet you again when you return, so the journey into Edinburgh is straightforward. Once there, the day is yours: choose shows, navigate the city, order food, talk to people and follow the Festival wherever it takes you.
Exceptional Accommodation
Your family accommodation is a little unusual too.
Blue Noun has access to one lovely, fully furnished two-bedroom apartment in Crieff, with a large sitting room and private garden. Its owner previously offered it through Airbnb and now gives me the opportunity to use it for Blue Noun family holidays.
That’s how I can include a genuinely lovely private family apartment in the £5,750 weekly price. But there is only one — and its availability has to coincide with mine. It’s another reason Bring the Squirrels weeks need to be arranged well in advance.
Why English Feels More Comfortable Here
I never think you need to be sitting in a classroom for serious English learning to happen. Most of my English coaching happens while we’re out doing things together.
But Edinburgh during Festival season is different.
At other times of year, I often include Edinburgh in an Experience English holiday and we explore the city together. But when one of the world’s great arts festivals is happening just a short train ride away, I want you to go and lose yourselves in it.
Choose shows. Watch street performers. Follow a recommendation. Change your plans. Eat somewhere interesting. Let the children choose something completely unexpected. Spend the day being a family in Edinburgh rather than trying to turn every experience into an English coaching opportunity.
Because the Festival isn’t actually a particularly good place for me to coach you. It’s busy, noisy, exciting and wonderfully distracting.
It’s a brilliant place for you to use your English.
So go. Enjoy it. Get swept up in it.
Then come back to Perthshire and tell me all about it.
We have plenty of time together for English before and afterwards — and suddenly, we have an enormous amount to talk about.
Family English Language Holidays
£5,750 per family, per week, 2027
Includes your private family Experience English programme
Includes 7 nights in your private two-bedroom apartment in Crieff
The Story of this Holiday
For a few weeks every August, something extraordinary happens in Edinburgh.
The city fills with performers, musicians, actors, comedians, storytellers and artists. Shows spill into theatres, churches, tiny venues and unexpected spaces. The streets themselves become part of the performance.
The buzz is extraordinary. The magic and enchantment are real.
If you’ve never experienced Edinburgh during Festival season, it’s difficult to explain quite how completely the city changes. And for families, there is an enormous amount to discover together.
But it’s also intense.
That’s why I love combining it with Perthshire.
Here, we have all the nature you need to recover from the excitement. Rivers, woods, hills, lochs and space. We can walk, make things, explore, talk, play, slow down and let everyone recharge.
Then, when you’re ready, you can wade back into the Festival for more.
And Scotland doesn’t stop being interesting when you leave Edinburgh. There are family adventures, castles, wildlife, stories, landscapes and things happening all around us.
So the week develops its own rhythm: Festival excitement, Perthshire breathing space, English, family adventures — then another plunge into Edinburgh.
You don’t have to spend your whole holiday in the crowds to experience one of the world’s great cultural celebrations.
You can lose yourselves in the magic — then come back to the countryside, recharge, and get ready to do it all over again.
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
What You Might Notice By The End of the Holiday
You’ve watched art, theatre and performances that made your family gasp in amazement. You’ve paddled in an empty river, flown a kite on a Scottish beach, baked a cake, explored, played and laughed together.
And English has been running through all of it.
Your children haven’t just been learning English. They’ve been having a childhood in English.
And you’ve had the rare pleasure of being there to share it with them.
→ What a family week here actually feels like
Interested in Future Edinburgh Festival Family Weeks?
Blue Noun only supports a very small number of families each summer through this special Edinburgh Festival Edition.
Join the priority list to hear first about future August dates and availability.
Further Information
If you’d like a clearer sense of how a week unfolds — how families spend their time, how children take part, and how English becomes part of everyday life — you can read more here:
Blue Noun offers family English holidays throughout the year, including family visits to Edinburgh outside festival season alongside nature, creativity, and gentle real-world English coaching.
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.
