Monte Velho - Portugal

Helen (this is their first In The Saddle holiday) Fabulous | For an experienced rider, this was a great holiday. Lessons challenged us. Instruction was very good and horses were well schooled and responsive. The accommodation, facilities and meals were all excellent too. My only criticism, and I shall be writing to MV directly on this, was the safety aspect out on trails. They permitted non-riders and novices on the trails which resulted on our last day in a fall. There was clearly no procedure in place and it took half an hour for someone from the centre to get to us. If the girl had been seriously hurt, this could have been fatal as there was no-one with medical training or even a first aid kit! The poor young girl who was our trail leader was an intern of no more than 20 years old who didn't have a clue. I was the only one on the ride with any experience and I could see an accident happening on more than one occasion. They need to get a proper procedure in place immediately and also, ban novices from trail rides completely as even if it's billed as a slow ride, horses are unpredictable creatures and they could have different ideas!
Otherwise it was great!
[Olwen from In The Saddle - we are glad you had a good holiday. Thank you for raising the problems which arose on your trail ride. These are serious matters and we have also discussed them with Monte Velho. They say that they will do a better rider assessment prior to going out on the trail rides. They have told me they do follow first-aid guidelines but clearly these need to be strengthened and we will be following this up with them to ensure they are.]

How could we improve the quality of pre-holiday information that we send?

Nothing. I think you've got it nailed!

How could we improve the way we handled your booking and payment?

Ditto above