A family riding centre in
the Dublin Mountains
Woodside Road, Sandyford. Forty-five stables, a covered arena and 3,000 acres of forest out the back gate — and the same people in the yard at seven in the morning as at six in the evening.
- 45
- stables
- 3,000
- acres of forest
- 30+
- palominos
- 4.9
- from 447 reviews
Fifteen minutes above the city, and nothing like it
Wed – Sun, 9 am – 6 pm · 7 days in school holidays
The Paddocks sits on Woodside Road in Sandyford, up where the housing stops and the forestry starts. Come off the M50 at junction 13 and you are here in about fifteen minutes. From the top of the yard the city is laid out below you, and out the back gate there are 3,000 acres of forest to ride into.
It is a family-run centre. Every yard says that, so here is what it means at Woodside Road: the people who own the horses are the people who feed them, rug them and decide which one you ride. Nobody hands you a horse they have never sat on.
Qualified staff teach here from a child’s first sitting to competition level, on horses chosen for temperament rather than looks — though the palominos have both. Riding hats and boots are provided free, so a first lesson costs you nothing beyond the lesson itself.
Getting here
What a day here looks like
- Seven in the morning
Feeds and haynets, before anything else and before anyone arrives. Forty-five doors get opened one at a time, and every horse is looked at properly — legs, feet, appetite — while it eats.
- 9 am
The yard opens. The first horses are tacked up, girths checked twice, and the walker starts turning. Riders are met at the office and fitted with a hat and boots.
- Through the morning
Lessons in the arena and walkouts out the back gate, spaced so nothing is rushed. Nobody leaves the yard until the person who tacked the horse up is happy with it.
- Two o’clock, Saturday and Sunday
The beginners’ group lesson. Five riders, five horses, one instructor standing in the middle of the arena and another on the gate.
- Afternoon
Turnout. The paddocks fill up, the yard goes quiet for an hour, and the horses that have worked get the rest of the day off.
- Six in the evening
Last feed, rugs on, doors closed. Then somebody walks the row one more time before the lights go off, because that is how you catch a problem on the night it starts.
What is actually here
Needs pro shootCovered all-weather arena
Lessons run in it whatever the sky is doing, which up here matters more than it sounds.
45 stables
Rubber matting under dust-free shavings, automatic drinkers, and thirty heads over the doors by seven.
Needs pro shootThe horse walker
Turning most of the day, so horses coming back into work build up gradually rather than all at once.
Fenced paddocks
Daily turnout for every horse, all year. They are horses before they are anything else, and they are kept like it.
Needs pro shootThe tack shop
Hats, boots, jodhpurs, body protectors, chaps, rugs and fleeces, on site rather than a drive away.
Visit the tack shop
Parking and horsebox access
Free parking at the yard and room to turn a lorry, so a show morning is not an event in itself.
The full list
- Covered all-weather arena
- Horse walker
- Rubber matting under dust-free shavings
- Automatic drinkers
- Five feed types
- Fenced paddocks with daily turnout
- On-site tack shop
- Free parking and horsebox access
How thirty palominos are kept
More than 30 palominos live here, the largest herd of them in Ireland. They are kept for temperament first, and the quietest of them are the ones a beginner meets on day one.
Every horse goes out daily into fenced paddocks. Stables are matted and bedded on dust-free shavings with automatic drinkers, and there are five feed types on the yard, because a horse in full work and a semi-retired pony should not be eating the same thing.
The lesson horses do not work all day. One that has done its hours goes back out to the field, and one that is having a bad day teaches nobody — we swap it, and we say so at the gate rather than afterwards.
Family run, in the plain sense
Needs pro shootThe person who answers the phone is in the yard. If they do not pick up straight away it is because they have a pony in one hand. Leave a message or send a WhatsApp — we reply within one working day.
Teaching is done by qualified instructors, from a first sitting on a lead rein to competition level, and the same instructors see the same riders week after week. That is not a scheduling detail. It is how anybody gets better: somebody remembers what you were working on last Saturday.
Nobody here is a character in a brochure, so this page names no one. What it should carry instead is a proper photograph of the family and the instructors, taken at the yard on an ordinary working morning.
Half a minute at
Woodside Road.
Shot at the yard: the horses over the doors, a lesson in the arena, and the climb out through the forest to the point where the bay opens up. It says more about the place than this page can.
The centre in figures
The Irish Times has written about the yard. 447 people have written about it on TripAdvisor, and we chose none of them.
Start with an hour in the arena.
A trial group lesson is €50 for a child and €55 for an adult, hats and boots included. Saturdays and Sundays at 2 pm.