QD Pride farm is in a beautiful spot with a view of the mountains. Naomi is a wonderful teacher,…read moreassessing your level and working with you to improve. Love it there!

I kicked off my birthday weekend with a morning ride here and had an incredible time!!! My husband…read moreand I did a one hour trail ride around the property (I think it's around 20 acres) with Linda and Christy (Kristy?) who were both so friendly and helpful. I had gone horseback riding once over the summer, but I am definitely a newbie and Linda guided us on what to do (ex: lean back when going downhill and lean forward when going uphill). I love that we got to walk AND trot and cross streams. My horse Sarge was a former NYPD horse and he was very good and well behaved (although he was quick and ate some grass before I could stop him while on the trail). After we finished, Linda helped take some photos of us and we got to meet the other horses in the stable. I would absolutely recommend coming here!!!

It was my 17-year-old son's first horseback riding experience, and he absolutely loved it! Bob,…read moreLinda, and Olivia were incredibly kind, patient, and helpful. It was clear they really knew each horse and carefully matched the right horse to each person in a group. My son was paired with a beautiful white horse named Ghost, who was calm, gentle, and perfectly suited for a first-time rider. By the end of the ride, he felt confident and was already talking about coming back again. Thank you, Bob, Linda, and Olivia, for making his first horseback riding experience so special and memorable!!!

My boyfriend and I called Ashoka Riding Club this morning to see if there were any available…read moreappointments to go horseback riding today, and we're promptly answered by Elene on the phone. She is a very sweet woman and asked what time would work best for us and we shortly landed on a time that worked for us both. Keep in mind, this place is Elene and Umberto's residence, and they are clearly hosting visitors because they enjoy what they do and sharing it with others. We arrived and called Elene and were met promptly by Umberto who took us to their stable to sign standard waivers and saddle up our horses for us, as well as giving us helmets to wear. My boyfriend and I were assigned Lila and Peggy to ride (both beautiful horses and unlike other reviewers wrote on here, the horses were definitely not skinny and underfed). Umberto helped us onto the horses one by one and then Elene instructed us how to hold the reigns and gave us the rundown on how riding and directing a horse actually works, which I found very helpful. Elene was stern at first with her instructions as she should be when educating someone how to properly ride an animal that could easily hurt you with its weight accidentally if handled incorrectly. After we understood the logistics we started along the BEAUTIFUL snowy path with Umberto and Elene alongside us on foot giving us more encouraging instructions along the way while also making very pleasant and interesting conversation. To be clear, they walked alongside us but were not holding onto and leading the horses as other reviews have said. Both Elene and Umberto were very sweet, interesting people who very clearly love what they do and love their horses dearly (after all, they moved to this location in order to be able to live somewhere where they were able to have their horses on site). I would highly recommend coming here for a ride if you're in the area, we enjoyed ourselves greatly and will definitely be returning again perhaps for a summertime ride this time!

I don't even know where to start with this review. Let's…read moreput it this way, the second u get there you start to think you may be on Texas chainsaw massacre. Everything is rusty and old and outdated. The owners are super weird. The horses are under fed and under weight. The whole trail consisted of them walking our horses. Not quite sure why I paid $50 for them to walk the horses. I decided to leave my sunglasses behind and tag my group on Facebook with our location in case we all Got killed cuz that's just the vibe we got from the start. Anyways let's fast forward to an awkward 25 min later where we were in the middle of the trail and we see bears. Yes bears. 3 black bears to be exact!! Umberto thinks it's smart to keep going on the trail and I said NO!!! Turn us around or I'm getting off. Also, he's hard of hearing so basically he screams for everything. So he turns around after we make him aware of the bears and screams go a wife "honey there's bears" now the lovely black bear family is looking at us 70 feet away. My horse is starting to get scared and start acting weird to the point I almost fell off. Thankfully his wife is smarter and told him in French to turn the horses around after he kept wanting to keep going on the trail. Thankfully all of us left unharmed. On the way back to the barn, Umberto point to a pile of rocks and tells me his first horse died there. I asked him how and he told me he shot him cuz he was sick. Not quite something I wanted to know. Lie to me next time please. I don't recommend this place. They give you no instruction on how to handle the horse or how to ride. And you don't really get a real experience out of it and it's super scary. Don't waste ur time, safety and money.

My daughter has been at Gardnertown farm for 8 years and has never been made to feel like she is…read moreinept or belittled by anyone there. Gardnertown is a family owned establishment and they treat their clients like family. My child has learned how to respect horses and their boundaries and how to truly take care of them.

I have been coming here to Gardnertown Farms for the past 4 years I got to say it was the best…read morething I did, the Trainers and the School horses are fabulous they taught me so much, now I am showing its is so much fun and your trainers support you so much. The facility is beautiful 2 indoor rings 2 outdoor rings stalls are beautiful they have a beautiful big grooming stall and wash stall with hot water I ride all year round. The horses are taken well care of the owners are so nice they will bend over backwards to accommodate you and they have camp for the kids in the summer and the kids love it I love coming in to the facility and seeing all the kids with smiles on there face while they are riding .

12/29/2018 After trying other options in the Hudson Valley,…read moreI'm pleased to have landed at Southlands. My only regret is that I didn't move here several years earlier. The staff is consistently professional, with my horse's welfare their first priority. I am actually comfortable leaving on vacation, knowing they will keep a close eye on him even if I'm not there every day. I also get high-quality instruction as my horse and I advance through the dressage levels. Once you get past the basic levels of dressage, it's difficult to find quality instruction outside of a full-training barn. But, I own a horse for me to ride, not for some trainer to ride. I am not interested in a "leave your horse and your checkbook" situation. At Southlands, Allison King is doing a wonderful job of helping my horse and I work toward FEI, while I ride and train him myself. Clinicians and shows right on the farm add to the learning and the fun. The barn is kept clean, tidy and safe. Footing in all three rings is excellent and well maintained. I can do a five mile trail ride right on the property. And huge bonus--the heated indoor arena makes NY winters much more bearable.

great environment- absolutely perfect for beginners or relearning how to ride. always a blast and…read moresuper people.

So funny tale here... normally on my friend trips up to New Paltz we stop at this one farm and feed…read morethe horses carrots. We go up this time... no horses, new fence, one barn is missing and all I see are sheep. What the frig Ricky?! So I search for other farms and find Lucky C Stables. We randomly drive to this place and just ask out the window if we could feed some horses... to our surprise we were met with smiling faces and even given a tour of the barns!! It was so enjoyable and we met, pet and fed so many cool horse buddies, that I would love to come back and book a trail ride or lesson next time I am around. Such friendly people and they made our day!

Fantastic place! Such a great, friendly and safe environment for kids and adults of all ages!…read moreExcellent lesson horses to learn on, and great riding instructors! Riders have the opportunity to show, lease or purchase their own horse or you can just take fun lessons! If you want to learn horseback riding or you're looking for your next opportunity to advance your show career, this is your place! They also have a phenomenal summer camp program, high/middle school teams and coach SUNY NP team!

My fiancé and I came here for his birthday and went on the 45 minute trail ride with Zack as our…read moretrail guide. He was absolutely wonderful! We had such a great time. Highly recommend !!

Such a great trail ride for myself and my son who is 9. Great guide, lovely trails, horses were…read moreperfectly behaved. Highly recommend ! Go in the fall - gorgeous

I have to agree with the reviewers here!…read more I bought the coupon and I was SUPER excited to go with my boyfriend. I tried calling them for a reservation...for 2 days straight and no one picks up! Finally a lady picks up and told me that shes really busy during the days and mornings and that I should email her. Fine, she gave me her email address. Every time I email her, she/they replies back a week or two later. NO JOKE. Here and there she tells me what she has this available or asking questions about my boyfriend and I (height, weight and etc.) or if I can do this day or that day. Yet when I reply within that second, i won't hear back until 2 weeks later. BY THEN those days that we "settled" on already past!! Days goes by then weeks then I'm looking at months going by!! . I bought this coupon in like Aug-Sept. HOPING that i can enjoy this in the fall with my boyfriend! By November, forget it. I called the place where I bought the vouchers from to get a refund or atleast credits. Thank God!

The horseback riding experience itself was fun for us, total beginners!!! Horses were tamed and…read morethankfully, no one fell off or got injured. 1 - Reservation - Bought my voucher from Groupon. Reserving the date on the website was a breeze; however, cancelling and rebooking another date was a nightmare!!!! No one would answer the phone or email in a timely matter. We emailed them to change from Sat 10am to Sun 10am; a few days would go by before someone wrote back to say "Sun 10am is booked, what about 2pm?" I replied "OK" immediately. Then a week goes by and finally someone replied, "Sorry Sun 2pm is booked, how about another day?" By the time they replied, the slots were already booked. It was ridiculous! 2 - Day of Ride - Helen, the owner?, called us at 7am and told us that the trails were closed, because of the heavy rain the night before. I was offered to either to reschedule or ride the arena. There is no way I am going to reschedule, so we went. We arrived 45 min early just to check out the farm. There were 4-5 staff there; all young college-like ladies, plus 1-2 older women. The farm was open, with cats and chickens roaming freely around. We signed the waiver form, grabbed our helmets (gross, small and dirty!), and mounted our horses. 3 - Horseback Riding - Our horses name were Aurora, Jupiter, Levi, and Lakota. The 4 horses trotted in a line; 2 staff were walking and leading the first 2 smaller horses my daughters rode. For an hour, we rode around the outdoor arena, and up and down the driveway path twice. My 10 year old daughter said "We were not really controlling the horse that much. It was boring, because part of fun was to learn and control your own horse the way you want, but that did not happened." They did not offer any riding lessons or stories of the horses or rescue facility. No hot cocoa either.