I landed in this beautiful island in Palermo Airport, notoriously a difficult one to land to being squeezed between Monte Pellegrino and the Tyrrhenian Sea, with a majestic orange massive full moon rising from behind the mountain, whilst the wheels were coming down the water below us was reflecting this huge bright ball held up in the sky and the light of the coastal towns shining like a necklace drawing that line in the dark that separates land from sea, and I thought that this was going to be the most romantic and amazing landing of my life, we were gliding into Palermo under this unforgettable night sky.
This has been one of the best rides I have done considering all the aspects put together starting of course with this dream arrival and following with the food and the unbeatable Mediterranean Summer mood!
One important fact I want to share with you that regards this specific ride, my fifth, is that this has been the first trip where i started to let go and feel free.
When i reached the middle of this beautiful ride I felt spontaneous the instinct to ride as freely as possible and first i removed my helmet, which I never really did before except briefly in Mexico when i bought my famous hat, but mostly for the first time ever in my life as raider I experienced the free riding. When I felt i could trust completely Ash, you will find out about him later, during a long canter at sunset flying uphill in the gold of a wheat field with the warm wind raising from the hot ground below, I let go of the rains completely, my lose hair catching the wind and the speed and it felt so natural to raise my arms and spread them...just flying.
Absolute trust, absolute freedom, just being one with Ash and with the world around.
I will never ever forget that moment. And that feeling. Going wild..
The ride is about 200km long crossing Sicily from coast to coast from north to south, it was end fo June and since the late spring rains everything was extraordinarily green and blooming all over.
We started from that jewel of Cefalu' where I enjoyed, to start with, a full day on the beach by myself just to get in the mood and tune in the holiday mode from the stress of work.
I started slowing down my pace surrounded by the beauty of this natural seaside ancient town, famous for its beauty around the world.
I met my group and our guides in the evening and I finally met an extraordinary woman riding with us, a lady in her mid seventies!!! Unbelievable!! American by birth and French by adoption she was a true legend! She left her husband in Paris sorting himself out with laundry and cooking whilst she enjoyed at her age over 200km of tough riding across the difficult terrain of this splendid unique island so rich in history and stories to tell still now!
We started the following day one of the toughest parts of the trip, directly with over 900mts climb, literally vertically, going from the cliffs above the beach where we stayed up to the Madonie altiplano!!
We met our horses right after breakfast and my boy was going to be this white arabian cross called Ash and we went along immediately really well! A true gentleman silent hard worker but full of beans when I asked him to show me what he was capable of!
He was able to switch immediately into a proper full Arabian blood to prove me his character and the right moves! if I didn't ask he was folding back into the quiet strong and brave guy he was.
Since the long hours and all the difficult rides we shared together he truly became my best friend, needless to say I bonded a lot with him and I loved each morning ,after breakfast and packing to another destination, that he was there waiting for me to mount on the saddle and go, keep going through Sicily and share the adventure!
Once we entered the Madonie protected area all of a sudden we entered Fairy land, under the hard sun of Sicily we were surrounded by any colour you can imagine, blooming fields full of wild flowers everywhere, I have never seen so many butterflies all together!
We stopped a few times to visit churches and crossed some nearly Alpine woods (!!) at few hundreds miles from the North African coast! We stopped once by a hidden natural source of fresh water next to an isolated forest and drank the most delicious fresh water I ever tasted always with butterflies bees and flowers everywhere. Isn't it like a dream? I was nearly expecting a Unicorn popping by at some point!
We spent the first night in the touristic facilities used by skiers in winter as all of a sudden we reached 1600mts altitude above sea level and there can be snow in winter, enough to ski. To me this was surreal being in the deep South of Italy!
We saw dears in the pastures the following day!! Isn't it beautiful to find out that even in the south of Europe you can still ski and see alpine landscapes healthy and rich in biodiversity? You really never finish to appreciate Nature!
Sicily is really proving you how many micro different ecosystems can coexist in just one island! I cant stop thinking still now what a beautiful surprise is to discover this real gem of the Mediterranean so rich and so diverse. Definitely Sicily as a lot to offer.
On our descent from the Madonie towards what the locals call the "Sicilian desert", a large area of intensive agricultural land mostly producing wheat and sunflowers, we saw the landscape switching under our hooves in the blink of an eye from the deep lush green into the golden dry harder fields. We were basically entering an oven.
Before we entered the desert though, we had a very adventurous and fun day coming down the mountains! As this is also an exploratory ride, we had often to stop and search for a better route and even stopped to ask for directions in some occasions!! I found this amazing and again surreal and yet a great part of the whole adventure!!
Following the indication given by an old gentleman we found along our way down, we entered a wood and got lost of course! But the fun was about to start, we ended up discovering a marvellous young Beech forest with its thick canopy protecting us from the bright sun. It was like riding into the forest described in the fairy tales!! Only us and so many young trees, the trunks still thin and dense, a beautiful scenery to get lost for sure!
The heat sometimes was intense and yet we kept going, a small group of lady riders ready for everything and anything crossing rivers and following roads, into the fields and on abandoned rail tracks.
Truly memorable is the day we got stopped on a slope down from a hill, by a huge flock of running goats and the ringing noise of bells filled the air, they literally infested like locusts the tiny country roads for entire minutes! I have never seen so many goats all together in my life, this was really and event I doubt I will live ever again.
I am going to tell you a very special story now, the most ever surreal event happened to me during a ride!! One day coming out of a thick wood still in the mountains in a completely isolated area crossed only by a road, we saw all of asudden in front of us between the trees a red car, a small utilitarian, we could immediately notice that the driver was frantically trying to revert and manouver his little car oout of the woods and back to the main road nearlby by driving up a short but really steep passage between the trunks. This was ODD! To say the least! First of all why are you there with your car? we started slowing down to nearly a halt with our horses to understand what was going on whilst the noise of the engines pushed to the limits was deafening and the car was miserably slipping backwards each time, this guy was never going to make it. And then the shock.
The driver was an Arab!!! He wore the full traditional attire including keffiyeh and agal!
It was the time of the terrorist attacks and we worried a little but still this was far too surreal, in this forest!
In the end we all decided, after moving on away from his car and all the manoeuvring, that he definitely needed some help to drive his car out of that trap.
One of our guides, Riccardo, dismounted and went to ask if he needed any help whilst we waited already on the road. The guy initially declined but then surrendered, and of course Riccardo drove the car and the Arab man inside out of the woods with a little effort and a lot of noise, you could tell the engine was working at its max to make it up the very steep path!!
Finally the "Arab" gets out of the car with Riccardo ..speaking perfect Italian!! Actually perfect Sicilian! It turns out in the end he was the son of a famous layer ( apparently) who decided to convert to Islam to avoid becoming a lawyer like his father...or more or less this was what we were told. In any case he was born in Palermo and was definitely Sicilian!!!
This one you cannot forget!
Then we finally entered "the oven" or "the desert" lost in the shadowless golden fields, luckily we enjoyed, to compensate the fatigue and the long hot hours riding, some very luxurious evening relaxing swims in the swimming pools of the beautifully restored farms selected along the way as our pit stops. This was the cherry on the cake without a doubt!
In these amazing farms often we were served the food produced by their orchards, basically zero miles, I would say even zero meters, my goodness no other ride, not one of them is comparable food wise to this one.
The quality of the food is superb I challenge anyone returning from this ride underweight, I put on weight in the blink of an eye!! The ricotta melting in your mouth fresh from the morning and so white and soft to look and taste like a cloud! The most flavoursome tomatoes you can get in Europe not to mention the aubergines hard cheeses and charcuterie of any kind from the local farms and of course the excellent wine!
And then again the memories of our unforgettable and tasty lunches resting in the extreme heat, well above the 30 degrees in the midday hours, under the shadows of the olive trees scattered in the fields where we stopped, or stretched under the oaks in the mountains.
The smell of the grilled meat in the air whilst resting a moment waiting for the lunch to be served, our horses roaming free around us in a small secluded and abandoned garden on the way, the cheeky snacks of cherry tomatoes secretly “stolen” from a field where we passed by and eaten still warm from the sun.
One moment I will never forget is the day our lunch was planned at a nearly abandoned train station, we were tired and it was super hot, we already had to stop to cool the horses by a public fountain, it was so surreal to be sat with foldable chairs and table by the concrete wall cracked all over and covered in weeds, and the silence of the countryside around us and the unmissable background noise of the cicadas, whilst laying down for a rest by the trains platform canopy, the rusted rails behind us, and I nearly pinched myself, I thought this is a real Spaghetti Western setting!!
We stopped by farmers houses isolated in the fields to ask for water for our horse, struck up conversations from the saddle whilst manoeuvring our steeds in their courtyards, hooves suddenly on the concrete and chit chatted with the farmers wife whilst he was getting the water pipe to fill the baskets. It all felt very normal, a bunch of ladies from all over Europe on their horses befriending a farmer in the middle of the deep Sicilian farmland, as utterly surreal as it was, I just loved it.
One afternoon passing by a hill with a long fenced area at its feet, we saw a bunch of horses and then we realised that was a stallion and its mares, we got all of a sadden in alert mode, and luckily so, as the stallion definitely smelled our mares and decided it was time to go hunting girls. Luckily, at the very last minute, after chasing us for a while across the filed and behind a thin barbed wire, he stopped but we were already cantering fast away, panic moment averted.
My favourite part, always was entering and crossing forgotten villages, sometimes in a cheeky way, horses were not technically allowed in the town but with such a little number of inhabitants- most of these little town are nearly abandoned now - we never encountered any problem. We rode in the maze of narrow alleyways in cobblestones and the unforgettable sound of the hooves on the stones echoing on the entire town, and then the ice cream break with the horses “parked” in the main square.
We even had the Mayor of one of the towns we crossed coming to see us at his Town Hall balcony to pay homage to our ride! A bunch of international visitors riding Sicilian bread beautiful horses and lost in the golden wheat fields of this splendid island
There will be really few “Little trots”!! Alex, our guide, calls the canters like this and the best of all was the one we had at dusk in the valley leading to Aragona when we took off and kept going at speed for over five minutes straight, a real joy at the end of a long hot day, I was also ready to dive at that point in the swimming pool waiting for us at the "Agriturismo" for that night. At our arrival, the surprise factor, we ended up being interviewed by the local gazette journalist who happened to be at the farm coincidentally and wanted to hear our story!! Straight on camera the minute we put the feet down from the saddle!
We then had a day off visiting the Archaeological site of Valley of the Temples in Agrigento which is stunning and perfectly preserved and...packed with tourist, we rode on the last day under the tall and slender Windmills harvesting wind power like Don Quixote and descended down closer and closer to the sea. We made it. From North to South from the Tyrrhenian to the Ionian sea.
And that day when I saw the sea, again, deep blue between the ears of Ash, I knew it was going to be over soon.
We entered the pristine wild beach in a protected coastal area, a truly beautiful long white beach surrounded by pine trees all over and the smell of salt and pine sap, our horses saw the see for their first time as they are normally stabled in the mountains. We had a bit of fun trying to avoid panic for our steeds once in front of this blue big moving thing with lots of noisy waves and this funny yellow powder under their hooves!
A final canter with the setting sun and, at last, the sight of the hotel and the van waiting for us ready to load Ash and take him away from me.
I really felt the separation this time, as the time spent together was a lot and we did share definitely lots of adventures, but we had to do it and I tried to concentrate on the swim in the sea all for me now and move on.
A couple of days later my plane was waiting for me to get back to the urban jungle.
It all felt constantly perfect, surprising, romantic and adventurous. You will ride in areas which are mostly inaccessible if not on a horse and immerse yourself in the fields and nature of the heart of Sicily. A land full of unexplored beauty not just along the already famous coast but also in its heartland.
Hard Facts
Ride: over 200Km, long hours difficult terrain
Horses: 5 stars, relaxed well trained hard working and good fun!
Horse Ridden: Ash white gelding, Arabian cross
Food: 5 stars PLUS! you can't beat this one.
Landscape: 4 stars
Hotel comfort: 5 stars, and a couple of 3 stars. Most with swimming pools!
Organisation/Team : 5 Stars
Logistics: 5 Stars,
All text and photos by Veronika Strange except *
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