Day 1, Saturday: Failte to Ireland
You will arrive at Shannon Airport (SNN) and be transferred to the An Sibin Riding Centre in Whitegate. Transfer from Shannon to Whitegate takes approximately two hours. On the arrival day, you can just relax and recover from your journey, or take a stroll on the well-mapped nearby East Clare walking trail.
For the more adventurous under you, there is also the possibility to go on a guided boat tour to the historic Holy Island with its monastic settlement of the ninth century. In the evening, you will get to know all your fellow riders for this week. You will have dinner in the tastefully restored 300-year-old farmhouse in the An Sibin Riding Centre by candlelight and open turf fire.
Day 2, Sunday: Riding Day
After breakfast, you will be brought to the start of the trail, where your guide will allocate the horses to you according to your experience. Every rider can then get used to his own horse for the week by brushing and tacking up, don’t worry - there are always lots of helping hands around you. You will then leave for an easy ride into the surrounding peaceful forests and huge areas of heather and bog land using old tracks through the Slieve Aughty mountains. You will ride your horses to a field where they stay overnight and you will be driven back to the the An Sibin Riding Centre for lunch. Riders and horses take a rest for the afternoon and enjoy a relaxing evening.
Day 3, Monday: Riding Day
Today’s ride brings you up over the hills of the Slieve Aughty mountains with fascinating views over the majestic Lough Derg and River Shannon. Along the track, you will be passing old farm ruins and miles of stone walls, and your guide will tell you about Ireland's most significant incident in history.
About 150 years ago, many farms and villages were left because of the famine. This was the time of the severe potato disease, which destroyed for a couple of years the sole source of food supply for the rural and poor Irish peasant and his stock. In addition to that, a typhus and cholera epidemic enforced the disaster, leading to a flood of millions of people emigrating to other countries or starving with hunger.
Knowing about those times, you will be greeting the tasty lunch waiting for you before you head across the extensive areas of bogland in the afternoon. There, you will pass local farmers cutting and drying the turf in the traditional way. A Neolithic dolmen with the legendary name Oisin’s and Grainne’s Grave beside the track proves that this area was already mystified about 5,000 years ago. Much younger (about the ninth century) are the ruins of a monastic settlement on Holy Island, which you can easily spot by the well-kept typical round tower.
Day 4, Tuesday: Riding Day
Leaving the sheltered pasture, you are heading this morning for the top of the hills again overlooking endless woods and grazing land to the north, west, and south. Long before you get there, you can spot way under you the sandy shores of Lough Graney where you are heading.
The trail goes right across the refreshing lake. The ride in the later afternoon takes you through the typical farmland of rural Ireland with its lovely green fields and the endless old stonewalls surrounding the peacefully grazing sheep and cattle.
Day 5, Wednesday: Riding Day
Today’s lovely wood tracks take you further westwards overlooking the wide fertile valley of the River Shannon, where hundreds of years ago Ireland's kings preferably used to settle. After the lunch break near a typical mountain river, you will cross the boggy uplands.
County Clare unfolds all around you up to the in the distance-rising hills of the famous Burren National Park. On a clear day, you will even get the first glimpse of Galway Bay.
Day 6, Thursday: Slan Abhaile
After breakfast, you will be transferred back (if booked) to the airport for your onward journey.
Note
- Riders have to be physically fit to ride up to 6 hours daily at all paces in a group of horses.
- Riders have to be physically fit and safe in the saddle at the walk, trot, and canter in the outdoors.
- Non-riders are also welcome, there is plenty for them to do including hiking, cycling, sightseeing, golf, etc.