Horse
Riding Holidays in
News letter December 2009
Join us on a horseback eco
adventure, endless beaches, river crossing,
warm lagoons and fantastic cross country riding in the heart of rural
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Wild Coast Horseback Adventures Home Page |
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1 to 12 week Working Horse Riding
Holiday & Volunteer Program |
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Anglo Arabs,
Percheron, Boerperd |
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Weather Forecast | Weather
Maps |
2009 is going to be the year that we remember as a turning point
in most of our lives. A crashing
recession has left us all just keeping our heads above water! Here at Sunray Farm, we are also managing to
survive the worst drought in living memory.
Its been a really tough year; but we can honestly say that we have
still had a great one! J
WORKING RIDING HOLIDAYS
I have just gone through our
charts and can’t believe that we have had 50 working riders stay with us since
January!!! I have to thank each and
every one of you for sharing our home, our horses and our lifestyle. It gives me such pleasure to see how each one
of you arrive and grow as a person. You
are all so brave – leaving your homes on an unknown adventure to
Clint and Dez have been working on “The Loft” throughout the year
and can now sleep 6 comfortably. The new
lounge area is almost complete (we intend finishing it off with tiles on the
floor). French doors open up onto the
lawn, and we have hung hammocks in the old oak tree. A new back door will stop everyone trudging
through the bedroom! We have also added
on another shower and separate toilet which makes everything a bit more
comfortable. The last phase will be
completed in the New Year – one more separate bedroom, which will gives us back
our spare room in the main house! We can
take a maximum of 8 work riders at a time.
Lee joined us in March as our
Yard Manager and Instructress for the Gap Year Working Riding Holiday. Thank you Lee. You are wonderful, and I really appreciate
all the hard work and effort you put in to making the program work. Lee has introduced the game of Horse Ball to
our riders, and now that the horses have got used to the ball being thrown
around they love it! (We play it with similar rules as Polo Crosse, but without
the sticks!) She is a bit of a sergeant major in getting everyone doing their
chores in the morning, but once the girls get over her bark, its great seeing a bunch of young women
having so much fun caring for the horses and doing so much ridingJ
Shunter’s (our head groom) riding has improved so much. He is having as many riding lessons with the
girls as he can, is very competitive at horse ball, could easily compete at a
novice jumping show and is now being trained as a guide to take the out rides
on the farm.
THE BEACH TRAILS & HORSE SAFARIS
Most of our trail riders this
year were riders who stayed on the working riding holiday. They ride 4 nights 5 days of our monthly 6
nights 7 days Wild Coast Horse Trail. We
know that things will pick up for the coming year; the soccer world cup is
bringing a lot of interest to
THE SURF & TURF HORSE SAFARI is a brand new adventure that we
have launch in conjunction with Horizon Horse Safaris. It really is a great combination of African
experiences and riding. (You can see all
the details on our web siteJ) We are all very excited about getting this
trail off the ground, and already have bookings for 2010.
NEW DEVELOPMENT - a WILD COAST HORSE SAFARI is
being created and we envision this to be a 5 star safari based at a luxury
privately owned game reserve between Sunray Farm and Kei Mouth. It will be a base ride with an option to add
on one or two satellite nights out along the
We are very pleased that we have been able to upgrade our bridles
to Wintec Synthetic bridles with matching breast straps and martingales.
The horses all look so smart!
The material used is extremely hard wearing, easy to clean and rot
proof. Perfect for our coastal environment, it does not stretch, fray or break,
and meets all our safety requirements, this is a good long term investment, we
have always been very proud of our presentation and turn out of the horses and
the new bridles lifts the quality of our tack to an even higher level.
TORSTONE SPORT HORSES & ENDURANCE RIDING
It has been an exciting as well as heart breaking year for our
breeding and endurance program.
The tragic loss of Al Adiyat
Shabah has left a huge empty gap in the paddocks. I miss him cantering down the fence whenever
anyone arrived – he always had to know who was doing what! Shabah also had a great sense of humor, and
loved to pretend that he was far more mean than he actually was – his favorite
game would be to prance around on the end of a lead rope for any unsuspecting
handler, until told sternly “Shabah, no” and he would become the well behaved
gentleman that he was. He leaves a
legacy of many beautiful horses, all with exceptional temperaments and that
special something that makes them outstanding endurance and riding horses.
Three mares, Sarah Jane, Queen Eleanor & Starlight were bred
to him shortly before he died, we can only pray that they took to the service
and will produce stunning foals at the end of next year.
We have embarked on a new breeding program with the introduction
of ‘Bobby’ a very handsome 16 hh Percheron stallion. Bobby is being bred to some of our
Thoroughbred mares and also our Boerperd/Arab mares. The objective is to produce athletic forward
going horses with good bone and sensible temperaments – in other words good
looking Cobs for the trails and general riding.
We had a stunning crop of foals this year. Three colts and two
fillies. You can find all the
photos on our Facebook page Wild Coast Horse Back Adventures.
Ashley & Torstone Tamsin
has had a fantastic endurance season.
Three 80 km races finishing in national team qualifying times &
their first 120km FEI endurance race where they represented the
THE FAMILY
Branden has been busy; 5 weeks
volunteering at a eco lodge in
Ashley has been riding hard, training for endurance – and doing
really well. He is also doing more with
the Working Riding Holiday and getting more hands on in the general yard
management. He will be exploring
different options this coming year, and hopes to complete his FAGASA level 1
guiding course.
Clint has been building the loft between hunts! He has done a lot of work on the farm, and
has managed to get huge areas of over grown bush cleared and opened up. One advantage of the drought is that many of
our small stock dams dried up enough for him to be able to get in with a
bulldozer and clean them out. Our dam
next to the house is now huge and deep – now all we need is rain to fill it!
(Then we will be able to swim in it with the horsesJ)
And me, (Julie-Anne) well, I have been working on the web site
(which is still a work in progress), and built up a fun network on Facebook
(Wild Coast Horse Back Adventures), I have not done much endurance (I did a
60km and could not walk for 3 days!), but have done all the crewing for Ashley
and enjoyed seeing all my enduro friends.
I have been leading all the overnight trails, with a couple of times
during the year only being at home for a few days between trails/endurance
rides. Organizing, planning, grocery
shopping, marketing and general office work keeps me busy the rest of the
time!! We never got to go away on
holiday this year, but I have great plans for when I can afford it J
2010
2010 is going to be a good year.
Bookings for the Gap Year Working Riding Holiday are already coming in,
but because of the world cup soccer the normal pattern of reservations might
change slightly. We are confident that
the trails will start to gather momentum again and that we will soon be fully
booked!
What our visitors want most in 2010 is something their money can’t
buy. It’s called Service Excellence – and it comes from being professional at
what you do, competent in how you do it, and treating
people with genuine warmth and respect when you do it. This is what you will get when you ride with
Wild Coast Horseback Adventures.
“It is in the simple sharing of love that we
make our beliefs come alive, and our dreams come true.”
Till next time.
Happy riding.
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Sunray Farm, Telephone +27-(0)43-8311087 Fax 086 6089578 Mobile 082-5670972 GPS co ordinates Sunray Farm South 32.37’41” – East 28.09’48” Kei Mouth South 32.41’45” – East 28.21’43” Please email
us for more details and prices
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Content on this web site is original and
written by Julie-Anne Gower. Phrases and concepts are often copied, but the
implementation thereof never perfected. Other photos on this web site were taken on
trail by our team and our many happy clients. Thank you for sharing your
memories with us.
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