About Equine Escapes
Three horses, a Cornish smallholding, and the reason we started sending riders abroad.
Equine Escapes is Noonvares Farm in west Cornwall. We keep the horses ourselves, we let the two cottages ourselves, and when somebody wants to ride somewhere we cannot put them, we know the people who run those rides.
The horses
You will meet all three, whether you came for them or not.
They live here. They are not a riding school string and they are not on a rota. Three of them, each doing a different job, and between them they are most of the reason this business exists.
Taffy
Welsh cob
The workhorse of the yard, and the one with opinions. Cobs are built for Welsh hill ground, which is why they take Cornish lanes and moor tracks without fuss.
Jasmine
Shetland pony
Small, and entirely aware of it. Shetlands are the reason children who arrive nervous about horses leave asking when they can come back.
Polly
Moorland pony
Bred for the ground she stands on. Native moorland ponies hold their condition on rough grazing that would not keep a thoroughbred through a week.
The farm
Noonvares Farm, west Cornwall.
A working smallholding between the moor and the north coast. Stables, grazing, a yard that is busy by seven in the morning, and two holiday cottages on the same ground.
Both cottages take a horse. Gwel an Derowen and Noonvares House each have stabling and grazing attached, so your own horse travels with you rather than staying behind. That is the thing we sell, and it is the thing we can speak about first hand, because the horses in the next field are ours.
You will not have the farm to yourselves. It is a working yard with animals in it and the other cottage is usually occupied. If that sounds like the holiday you want, it probably is.
See the cottages and the stabling
Riding abroad
Why we started pointing people at other people's horses.
Because we kept being asked. People who had stayed here wanted to ride in Spain, in Iceland, on the steppe, and they wanted somebody who knew horses to tell them which trip was honest about what it asked of a rider.
So that is what we do. We know horses, and we know the people who run these rides. Tell us how you ride and where you want to go, and we will put you with the right one.
Every destination page on this site says what the riding actually asks of you, in hours, in pace and in terrain, before it says anything else. If a trip wants six hours a day at a canter, you will read that here before you read it anywhere else.
Where you can rideThe rest of the farm
Goats, birds of prey, and several hundred trees.
The horses are the business. The rest of it is the farm, and guests meet all of it. We write about it because we keep it, not because it ranks.
Who runs it
Liz Adey keeps the horses and answers the phone.
There is no team page here because there is no team. Liz keeps the horses, runs the yard and takes the bookings. When you send a message about whether your horse will settle in a strange stable, the answer comes from somebody who has moved horses to strange stables.
That is also why this site says no when the answer is no. A holiday that does not suit your horse is not a holiday we want to sell you.
Ask us something
Where to go next