Can children ride horses in Side?

The minimum age is 2

2 years old is where the line sits. Above it a child can go on the booking; below it there is no ride at all, and being tall or bold for their age does not move it. We would far rather you read that here than hear it when you arrive at the riding centre.

The fare does not move with age either. Every rider on the list costs €40, the smallest and the oldest alike, because the riding centre charges by the saddle and not by the year. There is no half price and no free place: a small child fills a saddle like anybody else.

The youngest riders: what you are really booking

At the bottom of the range, be clear with yourself about what this is. It is not a lesson and nobody will dress it up as one. It is a small person sitting on a large, quiet animal that walks for an hour through the pines and down to the water, in a group with a guide in the saddle throughout.

What the centre can put alongside a very young rider is the part that counts: a member of staff on foot, holding the horse at its head. The operator's own record says that can carry on for the whole route, for as long as a young or nervous rider needs it. Whether it happens is the riding centre's judgement once you are there, and it turns on who is working and who else is out with the group — so ask when you arrive, and take it as an offer rather than a fixture.

Nobody has to go through with it either. If a child looks at the horses and wants none of it, say so to the staff then and there, before the group mounts. That is the better outcome for everyone, the horse included.

Older children

Further up the range there is nothing special to arrange. An older child gets what the adults get: the same tracks through the pines, the same stretch beside the Mediterranean, the same pace, the same guide, the same hour. What happens on the day sets it out from pickup to drop-off, and it describes their day as much as yours.

One thing is worth settling before it comes up in the saddle. The standard hour is a walk, and anything quicker is not part of what you have booked: a guide may offer a faster stretch to someone who can genuinely show experience, where the ground and the day allow, never automatically and never to a rider who has not asked for it. If a child has seen films of horses tearing along a shoreline, it is kinder to set that straight at the hotel than to leave it to the guide.

What a young rider is given

• A horse the staff pick. Riders are put with horses by the people who know the horses, so there is no choosing your own.
• A helmet. Every rider is handed one, and we ask that it goes on. Look at the fit yourself as well — a small child may not mention that it is rocking about.
• A guide on horseback with them for the whole of the route.
• A member of staff on foot, where the centre judges it useful — at the horse's head, and the operator's record allows that for the entire route.
• A walking pace. The standard hour does not go faster than that.

The helmet question has a page of its own: how to tell whether one fits, which is worth two minutes of your time before the helmets come out.

Booking with children

Book a place for everyone who will be on a horse, and for nobody else: the form counts riders, not the size of the family.

Then write each child's age in the notes. Of everything you can tell us, that is the one that does real work: it is how the riding centre knows which horses to have saddled and standing ready when the vehicle arrives.

Children of 2 to 10 go in the child row on the form. The fare beside it is the same €40 as the adult row — the two rows are there so the centre can see how the party is made up, not so that anybody is charged differently.

Would you rather the group were only your family? Private rides are put together on request.