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Horizon Horseback Adventures
Author: Alice Gully
Where else can you choose a horse from a selection of 70 or more, ride around a novice cross country course, enjoy learning to ride as a complete beginner, gallop alongside wildebeest and swim your horse bareback across a lake? Horizon Horseback Adventures has all this and so much more besides.
This has to be the most diverse, laid back and friendly riding lodge in Africa. Laura and Shane Dowinton are very welcoming hosts and their bubbly personalities make guests instantly feel at home. This is a riding holiday as opposed to a riding safari, and although located in South Africa’s game rich Waterberg area, there is so much else on offer that the riding safari element took up only about half of our stay. In the immediate area you can expect to see a wide variety of plains game and signs of the odd leopard (although very rarely seen). Within half an hour of the lodge we saw reedbuck, giraffe, zebra, impala, civet, eland and slightly further afield its possible for experienced riders to ride with buffalo, rhino, elephant and lion. Everywhere you go there is fantastic bird life, too many species to mention but stunning owls and thousands of quilelea skimming the roofs of camp against the sunset.
You can ride as much or as little as you like here and when we were not trying to spot wildlife on horseback we learnt to play polocrosse, not the high speed version I was imagining but more like zimmer frame hockey to start with. We also swam with the horses in the lake and played volleyball with the staff. The fabulous swimming pool overlooks the lake and is just the best bird watching spot.
For me the highlight of this holiday was my husband Jim learning to ride and loving it. Horizon have great schoolmasters and Jim learnt to ride the best possible way; in the heat, on something safe, on actual rides with African guides with terrific sense of humour. I know if I had suggested lessons in a cold outdoor school in Scotland with a 60 something woman barking at him, he would never have done it. At the end of our stay, he was riding well (a bit too well if the truth be told), and was coming for gallops along the open stretches and scoring goals in the polo crosse.
I felt that Horizon was incredible value, with prices starting from £110 per person per night including all riding, activities, meals, accommodation, drinks and laundry.