French & Surf for young students in Biarritz

Suitability

This 2-week programme is suitable for students aged 13 and 14 who are learning French. All participants must be good swimmers and are asked to complete a swim test on the day they arrive at the camp. All surf levels are accepted.

Language tuition is suitable for all levels, from complete beginner right up to advanced. Lessons cover a range of skills including practical communication, grammatical fundamentals, and language comprehension. Dynamic activities help to strengthen students’ spoken French and develop their cultural understanding of the Francophone world.

This programme offers a high level of supervision to all students. Teenagers attending this course are not allowed off-campus unaccompanied. It is therefore ideal for youngsters who have never travelled alone before, or those looking for a highly structured programme.

School

French lessons for young students in Biarritz take place at a dedicated campus in Anglet. This campus is less than 10 minutes’ drive from the nearest beach and only 12 minutes’ drive from Biarritz’s famous Grand Plage. The peaceful residential district where the camp is located offers an ideal home-away-from-home for teenagers. The delights of Biarritz, Anglet, and Bayonne - which together form the agglomeration B-A-B - can all be reached in under 30 minutes, and many feature on the programme’s daily activity schedule.

The residential camp has all the amenities young students could need. It has a range of classrooms for language lessons and 110 dormitories which accommodate 2 to 8 children, each with a washbasin and shower. Communal toilets are available on each floor. The campus sits in 4 hectares of lush gardens and boasts a range of sports facilities including a swimming pool, a pelota wall, an equipped gymnasium, football and rugby pitches, tennis and volleyball courts, and even a mini-golf area. Meals are served in the two on-site food courts. Staff members stay on-site throughout the programme, so are always on-hand to provide assistance when needed. Young students attending this programme cannot leave the campus unaccompanied, and so are supervised at all times.

This school has been offering junior programmes for many years, so it is highly experienced in providing exciting and immersive language camps to teenagers. It is part of a group of schools with language centres in 6 cities across France and thus benefits from a wealth of collective teaching experience. Its courses have Label Qualité FLE accreditation, which is the gold standard in France for language tuition. It is also a member of quality-control groups including the International Association of Language Centres (IALC) and Campus France. These credentials mean that the tuition provided is of the highest quality. What’s more, the camp’s location in a fashionable coastal area in the south of France makes this programme a popular choice for our young students.

Biarritz & Surf

Biarritz is a spa resort on the south-western French coast which is widely revered as Europe’s surfing capital. Visitors from around the world come to enjoy its excellent beaches and lively waves, so where better to visit for an action-packed surf course?! With its pedestrianised centre offering interesting shops and superb eateries, it’s also a safe and compact city which remains exciting - an ideal combination for young students, whether they are travelling alone or with friends or siblings.

Thanks to its appeal to surfers and its legacy of luxury, Biarritz is perhaps the best-known city in the B-A-B urban area. Its partners Anglet and Bayonne, however, are equally delightful. Anglet is known for its village feel, its pine forests, and its traditional Basque houses with their painted timbers and shuttered windows. It is dotted with parks and gardens, and has over 4 km of coastline offering dramatic cliffs and wide, sandy beaches.

Neighbouring Bayonne is noted for its rich heritage and its traditional events such as the Fêtes de Bayonne. As a protected French Historic town, Bayonne offers beautiful architecture and winding streets lined by café terraces. Its Gothic cathedral dominates the centre and provides a focal point around which many eateries are based. Bayonne also has an impressive botanical garden and lovely, tree-lined paths beside the river to enjoy.

Though the school campus is located in Anglet, our French and Surf course for teens takes place all around the B-A-B area, which is one of the largest and most important urban areas in the region. The mix of French and Basque influences here creates an attractive and distinct atmosphere which gives B-A-B its own unique flair. Once fishing villages and peasant farmland, this area went on to become the go-to destination for European elites, who ended up falling in love with it. Now, the triplet towns of Biarritz, Anglet, and Bayonne are home to interesting shops, traditional restaurants, and diverse historical attractions, so it’s hard not to see the appeal!

With trips to all three towns appearing on the activity programme, students attending this course will get a feel for Gascony - the French Basque country - and its unique culture while they enjoy a coastal summer holiday, make new friends from around the world, and improve their French ability.

How to get there

Biarritz Pays Basque Airport is 7.5 km from the junior campus; the journey takes just under 15 minutes by car.

Location of our school in Biarritz & Surf