Arkle Moor Riding Centre

06/01/2026

When your IPhone Photos bring up memories …. On this day 2025…. 😱🥶

Spring forward to January 2026…..Snow forecast to be here anytime … let’s hope it doesn’t hang around for a week like last year 😂🤦‍♀️🥶

For the love of the horse!

(Photos 2025)

03/01/2026

Bitterly Cold again this morning but still stunning views 🥶

Beautiful girls wrapped up and enjoying the winter sunshine 🥰

02/01/2026

Well another nippy🥶 start for us today, with a wind chill of -10 😱

Can’t say I’m dying to get out there 🤣😂🥶but ‘ The Breakfast Lady’ must arrive!

Happy Friday Folks!

01/01/2026

Happy New Year to all our followers, visitors, liveries, clients and friends! We would like to wish you all our best wishes for 2026.

This year we will be celebrating being established for 25 years! So eyes peeled for some throwbacks to when it all started - a wonderful story about Jane building a dream!

Meanwhile, as you’re relaxing after Christmas and New Year festivities…… why not embrace the Arkle Moor vibe… and plan your stay for this year 😀

We offer guided trail riding on our own horses*, equine b and b for your own horse🐎, and you can stop onsite, and sleep under the stars in our cozy, well equipped bell tents🏕️

Don’t Delay!!!… Get out your diary and start planning your adventures for 2026! 😀🐎🐎

(*Horse hire is available for experienced riders only, we have no suitable horses for beginners or total novices. We have a lower age limit of 16 and strict weight limit of 13 stone. We are not a pony trekking centre and only cater for small groups. We are a fully licensed and insured riding establishment)

16/12/2025

Totally relate to this post and felt we had to share!

Always find December and January our toughest months🥴

Throw in Christmas to make our days even shorter with family gatherings and shopping excursions.

The weather has felt relentlessly wet and windy the last few weeks - especially for all those, like us, who are high up and exposed.

Keep your chins up folks! We are nearly through the worst! 😱💦💨🫣

Winter Horsekeeping Is a Study in Endurance

Winter has a way of lowering the bar. Dramatically.

What starts as good intentions and vague optimism quickly becomes a simpler goal: no injuries, no escape attempts, everyone accounted for. Progress is optional. Survival is not.....

You’re caring for an animal that outweighs your car and has decided that cold air is basically rocket fuel. The ground has given up on consistency and now alternates between glue and concrete.

Daily life becomes a series of negotiations....

You versus mud.
You versus frozen taps
You versus a horse who has perfected the art of standing in the furthest, darkest corner of the field....

Then....
Somewhere in all this, you strap on your head torch. 👌
Not because it’s dignified.
But because it’s necessary.

There’s a strange satisfaction in it.
That narrow beam of light.
The small circle of control in a very uncooperative dark world.

For a brief moment, you feel competent. Prepared. Almost heroic.
Until your horse stares at you like you’ve lost the plot and refuses to move.

You think today might be a riding day.
You even believe it for a while.
Then the light disappears, your hands stop working, and your horse gives you that look that says this would be a terrible idea.

So you adjust.

You check rugs.
You sort feed.
You do the quiet, thankless jobs that keep everything steady when conditions aren’t kind. 🙏👏

Winter strips things back. It humbles you.
It asks for patience, flexibility, and a sense of humour you didn’t know you had.

If your horse is warm, sound, and settled, you’ve done enough.
Go inside. Get warm. Forgive yourself.

The longer days will return.
For now, the head torch is on, and endurance is the win.

19/11/2025

16/11/2025

An unusual visitor at Arkle Moor Riding Centre today 😍

13/11/2025

Definitely some water about!!!

Rather a wet morning today 😬💦💦 Hector and Lucy certainly got a good soaking 🤦‍♀️😆

08/11/2025

Sucked Back: About the Scariest Horse Problem I Can Think Of

In an attempt to. make horses safe to ride, much desensitizing focuses on stillness. Stand still while you see/feel/experience this stimulus. I hear often that people absolutely require stillness from their horses for certain situations, and I agree that being still is an important part of safety for mounting, tying and such.

But the thoughtful horse person must very carefully distinguish between still and "stuck."

Stuck is when forward is removed from the horse's vocabulary - blocked, shut down, repeatedly denied. A horse learning will squirm away, squiggle around, and naturally want to move away from a fearful stimulus or something they don't understand. An intelligent horse person knows how to channel that energy into something constructive, as opposed to shutting the energy down.

In time, the horse learns that CONSTRUCTIVE movement leads to calm - not evasive movement being allowed to continue. Constructive movement allows the horse to process through movement (the very thing they were designed for) what scares them, until they settle into stillness.

This preserves their forward nature - allowing us to build on it in their training. For things like trailer loading of course, we need some forward movement. Shutting down a horse's forward movement will come back to haunt you a million fold in trailer loading by producing a horse that balks, sucks back, pulls back, or flat out plants.

Shutting down forward movement creates more rearing, bucking, and planting - none of these desirable.

And of course, it is impossible to create contact, connection, bend, and any other desirable way of going without forward movement. You can't shape lack of movement.

Don't confuse "stuck" for calm. Don't remove the forward out of a horse just for the illusion of safety - a horse that does not go is in no way safe - it is not a matter of if, but when, this horse will react dangerously - and it is a travesty created entirely by human fear of the forward nature of a horse.

As always, the solution is learning to ride, learning to love going forward - constructively, not uncontrollably.
Human fear of forward is one of the greatest causes of flattening out and repressing the most beautiful parts of a horse: their love of movement.

01/11/2025

Baxter playing out today for the first time in 2 months. ‘Western Style’ with his mate Mark 😀

… no cowboy hat 🤠 today.. the wind had other ideas 😂

27/10/2025

24/10/2025

Just Relax…. and Enjoy exploring the Yorkshire Dales on horseback!

Our diary is open for 2026! And boy is it filling up fast! 😀😱

We offer guided trail riding on our own horses*, equine b and b for your own horse🐎, and you can stop onsite, and sleep under the stars in our cozy, well equipped bell tents🏕️

Book your stay with us and Enjoy the Arkle Moor Vibes … Get out your diary and start planning your adventures for next year! 😀🐎🐎

(*Horse hire is available for experienced riders only, we have no suitable horses for beginners or total novices. We have a lower age limit of 16 and strict weight limit of 13 stone. We are not a pony trekking centre and only cater for small groups. We are a fully licensed and insured riding establishment)