Sheep Round Up - Landmannaafréttur
22 September 2022
The Riding
The Accommodation
Do you have any comments about the accommodation and food?
There is relatively little flexibility for the team to provide alternatives to the evening meal if people have dietary requirements, and this is very understandable given the setup (catering for all sheep farmers and families). I did have to major on potatoes and sauce for the first 3 nights - and I was fine with that. The cooking was good, and the lamb was delicious. However, I think that if people have genuine allergies it would be wise to tell the cooks directly when you get there, and not to rely on messages getting through.
I wish I had taken more socks, I hadn't bargained on them being wet each day.
Outdoor shoes are removed when entering the bunkhouse and the eating area - taking either warm socks or slippers would have been a good idea.
Before Your Holiday
Did you have all of the information you needed to:
How could we improve the quality of pre-holiday information that we send?
Tip about indoor slippers or socks, and small plastic brush/curry comb.
Holiday was in a completely different place to that indicated on the map! - that needs to be corrected.
How could we improve the way we handled your booking and payment?
I booked over a weekend about a few weeks before the holiday, and really did not want to miss out on places for us both, the website requested full payment, which I made by credit card. I would have preferred to have used our hoof miles, which I now know requires payment to be made by bank transfer. I would have been happy to have the places secured over the weekend and payment made on Monday when your office is open, but I could not see an option for this. This is particularly pertinent, as after the email acknowledgement of payment, I then got an email to say that the holiday is not secured until there is confirmation from the local team.
[Becky from In The Saddle replies: Thank you very much for your feedback. If we know in advance that hoofmiles are to be redeemed, this can certainly be done. Unfortunately the automatic system online isn't able to handle this but we can also take payment over the phone.]
Do you have any other feedback for us?
It was a great experience!
We met a lot of lovely people.
The Icelandic sheep farmers were extremely friendly and helpful
[Becky from In The Saddle replies: It's great to hear you enjoyed the ride and thank you very much for leaving us feedback.]
Paula who has been on 13 In The Saddle rides. Seventh In-The-Saddle Holiday and still different | Exceeded expectations.
Our guides Ingvar and Anton looked after us well, and we enjoyed their company.
The horses were all sound, fit and very well cared for.
I think the description of the riding we received before departure was accurate.
The horses are all quire forward going, and terrain can be challenging, but I don't think that was any different to what we expected.
A good tip would be taking a small light curry comb (brush that is) would be a good idea, as you have to brush off mud to tack them up, and that may be two horses a day - those who'd been before carried these, so we were able to borrow.
It is very weather dependent, and we were lucky on that front (but other guests told us of poor weather conditions last year.