horseback riding in London
 

Can anybody suggest any places where I can do some horseback riding in and around London.<BR> Thanks,<BR> Mike

Hyde Park's the place. Don't know the names of the stables. Try doing a web search on Hyde Park riding.

Hyde Park is certainly the obvious and most convenient option. But though the Park is surprisingly big, you'd never be far from the sight and sound of central London buildings and traffic.<BR><BR>The London Tourist Board website has a list of stables throughout London, and suggests Wimbledon as one possibility - Wimbledon Common/Putney Heath are huge expanses of mostly open heath and woodland. They'll take a bit more time to get to, but would offer a more rural experience.<BR><BR>www.londontouristboard.com and do a search on &quot;riding stables&quot;

Richmond PArk has a couple of stables (Roehampton onside of Park). I used to ride regularly through there. Be conscious of 2 things for any Lonodn riding - 1) it is expensive, and 2)galloping is very restricted. Richmond PArk is limited to &quot;hand canter&quot;. So if you gallop, you can get fined by the rangers - not commonly seen. Some of the chaperones may go for it occassionally as it gets a bit boring for them after a while, but if it is a busy weekend, expect a fairly sedate ride. Hyde Park will be sedate. Horses I have found are very mixed. I have ridden a couple of nice thoroughbreds from Lilo Blum's stable (her brother was a horse trainer) just out of racing (she had Hyde Park and Richmond Park stables), and I have ridden appalling horses which did not respond to anything - unfortunately overridden and wrecked as an enjoyable ride.

We rode in Hyde park in December and had a lovely time. While we were in the park the Horse Guard rode by - providing a novel way for us to watch it!<BR>We used Ross Nye Stables. Their web site is http://www.ridingstable.co.uk<BR>They were friendly and had decent horses - let us canter in the park quite a bit. <BR><BR>Should you be interested in tack shops in London get in touch with me - I tried to find most all of them and found that many listed in the yellow pages were out of business!<BR><BR>

Marge - when I went to find stuff for riding (years ago), I too had real problems - in central London, really expensive deluxe shops for most part - I ended up using a weekend to Cambridge to go to Newmarket - lots of in expensive riding stuff there - although choice not that great if over 5ft 5. If small, it is fantastic - biggest market is jockeys and stable lads.