Munich Family Camp

A week after earning her Galop 5 certification in France, the family didn’t pause — they moved straight on to Germany. This time the destination was a Munich-area equestrian estate run by a rider still active on the international circuit, and the plan was ambitious: twelve days to push “knowing how to ride” toward “understanding equestrianism.” Mornings would be spent training, afternoons exploring — the same rhythm that had worked in France, now applied to a deeper programme built around training, family time, and European riding culture.

The estate is Gut Ising, spread across 170 hectares on the shore of Lake Chiemsee, with the Alps on the horizon. Between three indoor arenas, three outdoor arenas, some thirty stables, ten all-weather paddocks and a nine-horse automatic walker, it is built for exactly this kind of stay. The coaching came from a genuinely competitive pedigree: the owner competed internationally at 140–150cm show jumping and at Grand Prix dressage level, and her husband spent over a decade coaching Germany’s national youth team.

Because the young rider already held her Galop 5, the first two days were less about basics than recalibration — jump and dressage trial lessons to match her with the right horse, from an experienced international-level pony to a patient School Master. By day three the focus had sharpened to a single word: rhythm. “Without rhythm,” her coach told her, “there is no jump in any real sense” — a lesson she felt directly, as clean tempo turned each fence light and willing, while a broken one brought her horse in too far or too close. The days off the horse were just as full: a surprise invitation to try polo when they passed the club’s field, a hands-on pretzel-making class at a bakery dating to 1901, and an afternoon restocking at a Munich tack shop.

Jumping courses, a swan’s nest, and a medieval tournament

Day five and six brought a clean 80cm jumping course and several 1m verticals outdoors, including one fence recovered smoothly after her horse landed unsteady. Off the clock, the whole family visited Nymphenburg Palace, watching a swan building her nest at the water’s edge and touring the Marstallmuseum’s collection of more than forty ceremonial royal carriages and sleighs — a reminder that European equestrian tradition runs well beyond the competition arena. Day seven took the family to the Kaltenberg Knights’ Tournament, one of the world’s largest medieval-style jousting festivals: armored riders at full gallop, lances levelled, no stunt doubles and no special effects. For a rider mid-training, it amounted to an unscheduled masterclass in what disciplined horsemanship can look like once it becomes performance.

Thinking like a rider

The second week folded video review into every session, coaches breaking each round down frame by frame until errors had explanations, not just corrections. “From today,” one coach told her, “you’re truly starting to think like a complete rider, not just execute movements.” Afternoons ranged further afield — an outing to the zoo, where the two sisters gathered fruit to hand-feed the deer, and a full day trip into Austria taking in Mirabell Palace and its gardens, the Mozart family home, and the Salzburg salt mines, where the family suited up in miners’ overalls, rode a mountain railway deep into the hillside, shot down wooden miners’ slides, and crossed an underground lake by raft.

The final two days combined a mock competition with a full review of everything covered — jumps, dressage, flatwork — and an evening at Munich’s Marienplatz summer market before one last stroll through the village near the estate, the girls splashing in the square’s fountain, ice cream in hand. The results showed up after the flight home, in the form of competition wins at domestic events: a steadier rider, a more relaxed horse, clearer communication between the two. It is the outcome Horsopia builds every programme toward — not a stack of activities or a short-term crash course, but safety as the baseline, expertise at the core, experience as the extension, and growth as the result.