Meet the Horses

Your riding ability

On our long distance rides we will be travelling many miles a day in the saddle, riding up and down hills and over rough terrain so you must be capable of riding in a balanced manner for your horses sake! Our horses health and happiness is always a priority to us and because of the long days in the saddle, we require all riders to be competent in riding with a light seat (i.e posting the trot and light seat in canter) to minimise stress on the horses back. We will be crossing rivers, galloping along beaches and may need to jump small natural obstacles, like ditches or fallen trees - nothing too big, but you need to be a capable rider and able to control a horse at speed. It is also important that you are practised in leading a horse over difficult terrain as there may be times when this is necessary. We require all our riders to be at a walk/trot/canter level.

Your riding ability

Most of our trail horses are actually ponies - but big ones! The best equines to ride in this tough environment are tough native ponies – and Highland Ponies have been shaped by the nature of this land to cope with the toughest of the tough! Therefore, most of ours are Highlands, or Highland crosses, but we also have some lovely Irish Cobs a couple of Appaloosas, a Fell cross, a Quarter horse cross, an Arab amongst a couple of assorted others!

Wherever possible, we go for the natural approach with our horses. We use gentle training methods and most of our horses go barefoot most of the time - however we do use Easyboots when they are being ridden on hard or stoney ground, as we find that wearing boots works better for them than wearing shoes - no risk of losing a shoe and nail injury in the middle of nowhere and the boots protect the sole from bruising on stoney trails too.