Whats your hacking like ?

[TRECtastic]

Following on from a lovely solo hack from the field , all off road , this morning
I was chatting to a friend who lives in mid Wales but knows my hacking , she said even though I live in a very very built up area I have better hacking than she has !
Ours is a country park with multi user paths , all off road , but is busy with walkers , cyclists, plus a mainline railway we go under or over , and a motorway we ride over
So what's your hacking like ?

 

[Jenko109]

Endless.

You could hack all day without having to do roadwork.

New Forest.

 

[AutumnDays]

The bridleways themselves are nice, but to get to them you have to ride down a fast main road, in a touristy area full of ignorant drivers. One of the reasons I'm giving up riding

 

[DabDab]

Our hacking now is pretty much the holy grail as far as I'm concerned, and is a good 50% of the reason we bought this house (moved in a couple of months ago now). Our house is on the common, so it is straight out the gate onto grassland tracks, interspersed with bits of woodland. I haven't spent so much time galloping about since I was a kid

 

[HopOnTrot]

It’s okay, there is some roadwork but my mare is great on the roads. We can box up to a common which is AMAZING and only 15 mins drive away.

It does worry me when I have to replace my mare that I won’t find another horse as soon as she is on the roads, I also know that if we meet something she doesn’t like, I can hop off and lead her past, I don’t think she’s ever batted an eyelid at anything if I’m on foot.

 

[Red-1]

Mine is what I call safe village hacking. A 30 or 40 minute stroll on road. An hour and a half mixed roads and tracks. But they are more trot tracks than zoom zoom ones. In the other direction, there is part of the Trans Pennine Trail, can trot a fair way there but again more a trot track than canter. A farmer has some land though that he is OK about us riding on, I can do a 3 hour ride with a fair bit of canter, coming back along the canal. But even that is tracks rather than wild open spaces.

However, I can box to a few country parks etc within an hour, so the home hacking is good enough. Besides, we can ride to a couple of pubs which makes for a lovely evening/weekend day.

Much as I would love open land, I really do appreciate the quiet village hacking and dead end single track roads that we ride on.

 

[fredflop]

Non existent

 

[dottylottie]

pretty naff, but we make do there are a couple of places for a canter, and we can go for a river paddle, but a good stretch of road work to get anywhere!

 

[Hackback]

Mine is what I call safe village hacking. A 30 or 40 minute stroll on road. An hour and a half mixed roads and tracks. But they are more trot tracks than zoom zoom ones. In the other direction, there is part of the Trans Pennine Trail, can trot a fair way there but again more a trot track than canter. A farmer has some land though that he is OK about us riding on, I can do a 3 hour ride with a fair bit of canter, coming back along the canal. But even that is tracks rather than wild open spaces.

However, I can box to a few country parks etc within an hour, so the home hacking is good enough. Besides, we can ride to a couple of pubs which makes for a lovely evening/weekend day.

Much as I would love open land, I really do appreciate the quiet village hacking and dead end single track roads that we ride on.

Same. We're handy for the motorway network though, and as we live in an ex-coal mining area there are a few country parks built on the old pits within an hour or so's drive, which are free. If we park at the one near Chesterfield we can access a whole network of tracks built on the old railway lines and go for miles. Again, they are tracks though, not open space cantering opportunities. As soon as Forestry England remove the permit requirement for horse riding, I'm there! There are some nice places to go locally - woods, grassy tracks and x country jumps (not that we use them) but you have to pay.

 

[Skib]

Perfect because we hack off road and in a Royal Park with bridle tracks. But hard to get to the yard without a car or a taxi. I have depended on OH to do the driving.
I canter a lot and believe me, the tracks are often the safest places to canter, even in summer, because the grass tracks here are often too splippery to be safe.

 

[TooOldForThis]

Absolutely brilliant. We live on a sheep farm (not mine ) and we can ride wherever we want. You can ride for miles without touching a road, and further if you don't mind a short way along country lanes.

It's great for my 4 year old, but means I have to specifically take him on the road for experience, even when I'd rather not!

 

[ihatework]

From the competition yard it’s okay but nothing earth shattering.
Direct access onto byway and there are plenty of different length loops that are byway + country lanes. We also have access to all the yards hay fields for canter work when the ground is ok.

From my place where the non-ridden ones are (ironic) is excellent & varied. Direct onto bridleway. Quiet lanes. Byways. Off road access around Badminton. All weather gallops 10 mins away.

 

[w1bbler]

Fabulous, cross 1 (main) road & have the whole of dartmoor to explore
Only downside is bad weather, have to hack across open moorland for 10/15 minutes to ride around lanes

 

[dixie]

I consider I have nice hacking for here.
All narrow Country lanes. Quite close to Dartmoor but can only hack to a part of it unless I want to go out for 2+ hours.
I’m still exploring this particular area as only been here 5m but it’s nicer than other yards nearby. Lots of loops to do and nearly all good drivers.
I would love to have more off road riding nearby (except Dartmoor!). The lanes are nearly all stoney as well.

 

[rhino]

The estate I’m on is something over 50,000 acres, some private/farm roads if you fancy some roadwork but mostly forestry and moor tracks. Everything on offer from less than a mile round loops to multi-day ones. If you need to go further afield than that then it’s direct access onto other estates and the Southern Uplands. Not too shabby

 

[Sanversera]

Dangerous fast rural roads. I moved from a place with good off road hacking but it was busy with cyclists. You just can't win sometimes.

 

[Ahrena]

Ours is lovely. Tonnes of bridleways interspersed with mostly quiet roads. The only downside is there’s not really anywhere to have a good gallop without a 2 hour ride. Plenty of places to have a canter but all pretty short.

Definitely the best hacking I’ve ever had though! Also endless opportunities for boxing out.

 

[myheartinahoofbeat]

Lots of great bridleways and a bit of road work.
Some of the gates are very annoying as one of us has to get off to open them as you can't do them from horseback and some of the fields have cows in however its worth it for the riding

 

[Barton Bounty]

My hacking is fantastic, I absolutely love it, easy distance to trailer to beach only a couple of miles. Culzean country park is 4 miles away. Rozelle is 10 miles, lots and lots to do
However, none of them are bridleways.

 

[HorseMaid]

Edge of Exmoor, it's great really - to get onto the moor takes about half an hour up a lane, other than that we've got lots of woodland tracks etc and we can go through the field when the sheep aren't in them!

 

[Cloball]

Pretty great amazing views no where to properly open up though. We have quiet lanes with well trained locals and lots of steep hills and pretty villages but it can be a bit interesting in silly season. Quiet woods with a good long hill up into the hillside. On the mountain it's pretty rocky with wild ponies. It is possible to hack to the beach but it isn't the quietest for riding on and you have to either cross a big road or go through a busy little tourist trap. We get many cyclists but I really don't mind them and a fair bit of farm traffic which I enjoy less. I would love to be straight into the offroad bits. Even today when we were mostly off road the tiny bit of road work we did two cars were flying round the corner on the narrow lane .. to collect drop their kids off for a riding lesson

 

[tda]

It's pretty good, there is a small network of farm tracks/bridleways here, stoney so not really cantering tracks, but off road. Some quietish village hacking aswell.

Would love to live somewhere where you just set off and keep going

 

[Ifmpw]

Amazing, straight off yard onto yard owned well maintained tracks, good canter (gallop) tracks, all sorts of terrain, lots of hills, with x country jumps.
hence i am at a yard i travel between 3/4 hour to an hour and a half to - traffic dependant.

 

[Sleipnir]

I consider myself quite lucky. Either it's direct access to several rolling, hilly fields and a riverside for a simpler, smaller hack, or we can go 1km down a country road (there is some traffic and cyclists, but very polite in general), cross a highway and from that point on there's a practically limitless forest. From narrow, scenic trails to wide forest roads you can gallop on and on for kilometers - there's everything!

 

[dixie]

It’s heartening to read there is still plenty of people with good off road hacking

 

[motherof2beasts!]

Pretty crap really, lots of roadwork for teeny stretches of stoney bridle paths. No canter /gallop opportunities.

 

[scats]

We have onsite hacking around the farm field tracks.
Road hacking isn’t great as we have a major main road at the top of the lane. Frustratingly we are about 1.5 miles from the beach and a coastal bridlepath, but you have to negotiate the busy main road to get there. It’s easier to chuck them in the box and drive. Takes a couple of minutes.

 

[Ittookawhile]

Mine is what I call safe village hacking. A 30 or 40 minute stroll on road. An hour and a half mixed roads and tracks. But they are more trot tracks than zoom zoom ones. In the other direction, there is part of the Trans Pennine Trail, can trot a fair way there but again more a trot track than canter. A farmer has some land though that he is OK about us riding on, I can do a 3 hour ride with a fair bit of canter, coming back along the canal. But even that is tracks rather than wild open spaces.

However, I can box to a few country parks etc within an hour, so the home hacking is good enough. Besides, we can ride to a couple of pubs which makes for a lovely evening/weekend day.

Much as I would love open land, I really do appreciate the quiet village hacking and dead end single track roads that we ride on.

Ours is much the same, we also have a farm ride and XC course on our site. We are very lucky. I moved here because there was such a lot of choice of types of hacking so there would be something suitable for me and for my daughter and lots of different lengths of hacks, varying from a simple 30 min round the block to being out for several hours across open land and bridle ways.

 

[spotty_pony2]

Good. I have access out my back gate straight into the village and then onto bridleways so can do minimal roadwork. Front of the house is on an A road but on edge of a village so I do hack through the village on it on a Sunday sometimes and regularly cross it to get to some other bridleways. We also have many farm tracks and large field edges bordered with big dykes. Not a lot of big open fields around me as a lot of the bridleways are field margins or tracks. (Lincolnshire)

 

[Identityincrisis]

Fantastic, i livery on a private estate, which means endless opportunities, there are parts of the estate I haven’t been to in years, i tend to stick to the same-ish area but mix it up a lot. I don’t have to ride on roads , no walkers, no dogs, just other people who livery or work on the estate. It’s the best in the area for hacking which is why I’ve never moved in 24 years!