My Holiday in Iceland :)
This
is my favourite picture from my holiday.
She is also my favourite horse, Djasn which means 'Precious'. This was taken on our last day just off the
beach and although I have quite a lot of clothes on it was a fairly good
weather day!
I
spent 6 days riding around part of the Snafellsnes peninusla in Iceland and it
was fantastic. In those few days we
covered about 200km and I rode 10 different horses. I was lucky enough to ride Djasn 3 times :)
The
first few days were spent riding around the lava fields and mountains but we
also saw some beautiful grassland and rivers.
As you can see from the picture below we rode with almost 100 loose
horses (many more than I was expecting).
There were a number of guides/herders who were responsible for the herd
and keeping them travelling in the right direction.
It
was an amazing experience as you can imagine - the last half was spent riding
on the beach and around the coast.
We
rode through several rivers which were quite deep and crossed sand when the
tide was low which meant riding through shallow pools - great fun. The tölt is amazing, some of the Icelandic
horses will tölt automatically but some take a bit more work. I did manage to get them all to tölt though
which I was really pleased about as this was the first time I have ridden an
Icelandic horse.
The
horses are all around 14hh but are
always called horses and not ponies! It
was a bit odd riding something so small but it was very easy to get on and off
:) The saddles are placed much further
back than in the UK - there has to be a handspan between the girth and the
elbow - which took some getting used to as it means the girth sits around a
fatter part of the horse than I am used to.
Each horse also had a crupper to keep the saddle back and drop
nosebands.
We
had saddle bags to carry our lunch, water and any spare waterproof clothes -
although I wore them all after the first 2 days. The picture above is from Day 2 when it was
lovely and warm and sunny. The next day
it rained all day - and was so cold!!!
During
the trip we saw an Arctic fox (in it's summer coat) a couple of Sea eagles and
some seals at a distance. There were a
lot of Arctic terns by the coast too and lots of other birds which I don't know
the names of.
I
would totally recommend this trip - I am hoping to go again!
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Until next time!
Jo
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