Short summery first.

I Come from Sweden and live with my husband in France with Icelandic horses. 

We ride in the nature mainly and sometimes we do a little dressage and jumping in the forest. We ride barefoot and use side pull.

Mainly we do walks and a bit of tölt, galloping and trot now and then on the walk.  We often take long slow walks its nice.  In the paddock  we do a bit of dressage. We do NH a la Linda hastkraft Malmqvist she is trained by Craig P Stevens.

In the summer the forest provides cool and shade. In the winter it provides protection from wind and rain. The summer is beautiful but you have to be careful the ground is rock hard where we ride now. Its different from before where we had more soft and varied ground. We have boots if its much stones and gravel. I try to find paths without gravel so we can walk barefoot as much as possible.

We enjoy riding in the snow in the winter. A sunny winters day is the best. As the horses are barefoot it is really easy as you get a good grip in lots of snow. If its icy in the early spring end of winter its easy to put studs on boots for a good grip or one have to try and walk round icy patches. Horses may have a rest as well on really bad days or one may choose the paddock if the ground is ok there.

I have the Barefoot saddles. Its good for nature riding / pleasure riding its perfect. We have side pull briddle for the horses it works well however one have to be very careful as these bridles may be sharper then people generally realise.  

For more advanced dressage I believe it takes some getting use too both for horse and rider when making the change from bit to a side pull. We work on riding with feeling, telepathy and centered seat. 

For sun and heath protection we have a small woodland in the horses field its dry and with hill parts and rather big so we are pleased. 

There is also a good breeze.  I hope it will be cold enough in the forest and this woodland this summer. We have UV insect protection covers as the horses may stay in the sun if its a cool wind. A stone barn would be nice, its on my list.

My horses where born in Iceland lived in Sweden and now we all are in France.