Sicily - Pippa's Paddock - Day #1

Pippa's Paddock is a small family run business that organises activity holidays based at their ranch in Sicily. They offer horse riding, cycling, yoga, camping and boating holidays, depending on your preference. Owned by Mark and his daughter Pippa, Mark is Maltese, and Pippa was born in Wales as her mother is English! They moved to Sicily when she was 8 years old. Their experience of the fun and beauty of Sicily goes back a long way when Mark raced cars throughout Italy for 20 years in the 80's and 90's. During that time he travelled extensively, racing in remote places and taking in all that the island offered in terms of the things to do and off-beat places to visit. This knowledge was an invaluable basis for what would one day be Pippa’s Paddock.

In 2014 Pippa’s Paddock organised the first University riding holiday for the University of Portsmouth's Equestrian Club. Their philosophy is that there is a lot to life worth enjoying so besides the horse riding, which is great on all the mountain tracks they have there, but there are also many excursions, sightseeing, activities and evenings out…

One of the girls we were supposed to be going with dropped out last minute, so only 4 of us went! We flew out to Sicily from Stansted on Monday the 10th June, which for me involved getting a 10am train from Horsham to London Victoria, then a coach from Victoria bus station to Stansted airport for a 5pm flight. By the time we actually arrived at Pippa's Paddock it was 1am... So our real first day was Tuesday. We got up around 8am and breakfast was already prepared for us. We got ready and we were taken to a local villa with a pool where we got to relax, sunbathe and swim after our long day of travelling the day before. We had traditional Sicilian lunch there before heading back to the ranch for our ride. Usually they ride first thing each morning, but at the time of our holiday there was a massive heatwave so they had to change our schedule around to allow us to ride in the evenings once it had cooled down, but before it got dark.

We were each allocated a horse that day, I was given Tyrone. He is a beautiful black stallion whom they rescued locally. They told me he was a quiet horse and liked to follow his friends until I rode him... He was always pacing ahead, overtaking the other horses to be at the front of the pack! Pippa told me she hadn't seen him like this before, that he could tell that I was excited to go fast, which was true, and so he wanted to be forward for me. I gave him a long rein rather than holding him back. We all got on so well with our allocated horses that we rode the same horses every day, whereas usually, people swap. Tyrone has long awkward legs and was always tripping over his own feet. I ended up nicknaming him 'my little dinosaur' because of his long neck, funny noises he makes and his love for eating every plant he could find. He was super chill, and was a pleasure to ride. I miss him so much already!

This was after our first ride together, you can see he looks sleepy and just wants to eat! I wore a bum-bag with my phone in and some emergency snacks. I also wore a GoPro to document our rides, most importantly the views and the gallops! Our colour scheme also coordinated very nicely!

At the end of the day we were treated with a visit to see their new foal that was only 3 days old! I got some lovely photos of the mare and foal and they will make for great inspiration for my project!

We then had pizza for dinner and attempted to sleep in the hot weather. Thankfully we all slept quite quickly as it had been another busy day...