What to pack for two weeks in England

Two weeks, one suitcase, and a country whose weather has a reputation it mostly deserves. Here is what actually matters, in the order it matters, from watching several hundred students unpack.

The forecast is not the guide

Parents check the temperature for Newcastle or London in July, see eighteen degrees, and pack for eighteen degrees. The number is right and the conclusion is wrong, because an English summer day is not one temperature. It is twelve degrees and drizzling at nine in the morning, twenty-two and bright at two, and fifteen and windy by the time the group walks back along the river at six.

The answer is layers, not warmth: a t-shirt, a light jumper or hoodie, and a waterproof jacket, all worn at once on a bad morning and carried in a bag by lunchtime. One thick coat is the wrong shape of solution — it is either too much or not enough all day, and it takes half a suitcase.

Rain here is rarely heavy. It is fine, persistent and horizontal, which is why a waterproof with a hood beats an umbrella. Umbrellas on the Tyne have a short and undignified life.

The three things students forget

A plug adapter. The UK uses the three-pin Type G socket and nothing else fits it. This is the single most common oversight and it is the most annoying, because a student discovers it at eleven at night with a phone on four per cent. Bring two: one for the phone, one for everything else. They are cheap at home and expensive at an airport.

A refillable water bottle. Tap water is drinkable everywhere in the UK and there are fountains in most public buildings. A student who does not bring one buys a plastic bottle every afternoon for a fortnight.

Comfortable shoes that are already broken in. A study holiday is a walking holiday with lessons attached — a city tour, a castle, a beach, a museum, and the walk to the bus. New trainers bought for the trip cause blisters on day two. Bring the old ones and one spare pair, because wet shoes do not dry overnight in a host family's hallway.

The one thing everybody overpacks

Clothes. Students routinely arrive with fourteen outfits for a fortnight and wear six of them.

Most host families offer laundry and most residences have machines. Pack for about a week and plan to wash once. What that frees is the space and the weight allowance for the things above — and for whatever they buy while they are here, which is always more than they expect.

Documents, in one place

Not in the suitcase. In the bag that stays with the student.

• Passport, and a photograph of it on their phone
• Visa or ETA confirmation — see do we need a visa for a short English course
• The school's letter of invitation
• The letter of parental consent, for a minor travelling without a parent
• Flight details, including the return
• Travel insurance certificate, if you have taken one
• Our twenty-four-hour telephone number, saved in the phone and written on paper

That last one is not belt-and-braces fussiness. A phone with a flat battery is exactly the situation in which the number is needed.

Medicines

Bring what the student takes, in its original labelled packaging, with a note from a doctor for anything prescribed. Bring enough for the whole trip plus a few days — a British pharmacy cannot dispense a foreign prescription, and getting a repeat while abroad takes a GP appointment the student does not have.

Tell us about all of it at booking, including things that feel minor. An inhaler, an allergy, a course of antibiotics finishing during the trip — every one of those changes what the household and our staff need to know, and finding out in week two is how a small thing becomes a difficult one.

Money

Less than you think. Meals are covered as the course page states, and the named excursions are part of the course. What a student spends money on is a milkshake, a football shirt and presents on the last day.

A prepaid card in the student's own name is better than cash — contactless works essentially everywhere in Britain, including on buses and in most small shops, and a card can be frozen if it is lost. Some cash is still worth having for a market stall or a seaside ice cream.

A small present for the host family

Not required, and never expected. But something from home — a local sweet, a small thing from the student's city — makes the first evening enormously easier, because it gives a fifteen-year-old something to talk about in a language they are nervous about using. Of all the advice on this page, this is the one families thank us for.

What not to bring

A hairdryer or straighteners bought for a different voltage — they will not work well on a UK adapter and can be a fire risk. Anything valuable and irreplaceable. Food that customs will refuse. And a laptop, unless there is a specific reason: it is one more expensive thing to keep track of, and nothing on a study holiday requires one.

Before the flight

Check the passport's expiry date. Check the airline's baggage allowance rather than assuming. And have the student rehearse, once, what they will say at the border: the name of the school, where they are staying, and how long for. It takes ten minutes and it makes arrival a formality instead of an ordeal.

If there is anything you are unsure about — a medical need, a first flight alone, a dietary requirement a host family will need to plan around — put it in the message on the contact page. It is the useful thing to tell us, and it is the sort of thing we would rather know in May than in July.