GENERAL CONCEPT

We rent out a four-berth horse-drawn caravan with cooking and sleeping facilities on a self-drive basis. Our visitors come to us and take a horse and caravan out to explore and enjoy the Wicklow countryside.

Our horse caravan holiday has two main features - Building a good working relationship with a horse and exploring the Wicklow countryside in a carefree and non-hectic fashion.

This unique holiday invites you to experience a way of life, a people, a culture and landscape, combined with an activity which practically anyone can enjoy. It also invites you to establish a bond with your horse, an adventure in itself which brings great satisfaction to all members of the family.  We find that our visitors consist of an unusually broad cross-section of people. We have visitors with and without children, from all continents and of all ages. We get single families, groups of 3 or 4 families, school classes with their teachers, trades unions with their youth groups and their group leaders

TRAINING & ROUTES

We brief you on the attractions and features of this area and facilitate you in choosing your itinerary from a selection of marked routes. We provide you with a marked map and written details of the locations you intend to visit with your horse and caravan. You spend this first night of your holiday with us in your caravan, parked in our field. On the morning after your arrival, we do the 'horse instruction'. This consists of your learning and practicing how to catch, look after, harness, yoke and drive a horse.

Over 70% of our new visitors have no horse experience at all. Obviously, people booking this kind of holiday are prepared to get their hands dirty and bring with them a commitment to learn about and work with a horse and also bring a healthy amount of practical common sense. Before you start on the comprehensive 'horse instruction', we will have talked with you and will match you with a horse suitable for your chosen route and for your horse experience or lack of it. Our training is such that we have confidence that our visitors will be capable of working their horse and enjoying their holiday and we try to impart this same confidence to our visitors as well before they leave our base.

PLACE TO PLACE

Designated farmers, guest-houses, pubs and hotels make overnight facilities available to horse- drawn caravan visitors for a fee. We have a selection of locations in our area where the farmer, the bed-and-breakfast proprietor, the pub, the guest-house owner and others welcome our caravans to park and graze the horses at night. These are the 'overnight stops'. At a minimum, they provide parking for the caravan, grass for the horse, rubbish disposal and sanitary facilities. However they often provide much more, including packed-lunches, cooked meals, farm produce, and sometimes transport to local visitor attractions. Some places also offer to serve breakfast and some have country produce for sale. They generally charge between €20 and €25 for these facilities.

The distance one can expect an average horse to travel pulling a three-quarter tonne weight of caravan averages daily at about 12 miles or 20 Km. A typical traveling time for this distance is about four hours, taking into account rest-stops and harness checks.

We find that our visitors actually average some 8 miles (12 Km) daily but then they sometimes spend two days at some favorite location.

This is a holiday where you and your horse decide the pace. You may choose to have a very quiet, leisurely, intimate break, or you may prefer to fill your time with activities

RIDING HORSES

Riding horses can also be hired in combination with taking a caravan. This allows you to stretch out the day with an evening trek or an early morning ride on the beach. Riding horses are available for beginning and medium riders aged over twelve.

CARAVAN LAYOUT.

Our caravans have daytime seating for four to six and night-time sleeping accommodation for four in two double-beds or in one double-bed and bunk beds (one over the other). We offer extra bedding and an extra bunk to allow two adults and the three children to occupy a caravan at no extra charge.

There is a small kitchen area with a twin-burner butane gas cooker with grill. Cooking pots, a frying-pan, a kettle, a teapot, water container, crockery and cutlery are all included in the caravan. There is hanging space for full-length clothes as well as four shelves for storage. We provide duvets or sleeping-bags, pillows as well as the appropriate bed-linen but not towels. There are no toilets in the caravan - our visitors avail of facilities at the overnight stops and at pubs, etc. en route. Two gaslights provide gentle lighting at night and on cool evenings a short low burn of one of the cooker flames will warm the caravan in minutes