Taken for a ride
Taken for a ride
Shena Guild converts her husband and son to the saddle in Connemara
My teenage daughter and I, who have been riding since we could walk, decided the time had come to convert the two menfolk in our family to the joys of the saddle. We hoped a week’s horse-riding holiday through the highlands on the remote west coast of Ireland must surely do the trick. The ‘Connemara Trail’ has horses to suit all levels of rider from complete novice to experienced. And age doesn’t matter so long as you’re fit and determined enough to manage five hours a day in the saddle. The rewards are a four-star hotel most nights, a warm welcome and gourmet cuisine created from fresh local meat, game and seafood.
We touched down at Galway’s tiny airport to be met by a muddy Land Rover and trailer carrying two ponies for our children, and drove north and west out of town through wild and lonely bog country. Finally we stopped. Up ahead of us was a corral full of Connemara ponies — descendants of the Arab stallions that swam ashore from the sinking Armada galleons in 1588. Leaning against the sides were the other half a dozen riders, quite an international bunch from Los Angeles, New York and Brussels.
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