Travelling from Finland to Germany with the horses

After 2 weeks of panicking, stressing, packing and organising on a very hot Saturday afternoon, it was finally time to load up the horses onto the VERY nice horse lorry! We decided to go with Marcel Jordan Horse Transport because I had heard and seen only good things about them, and also because our neighbour had bought 3 horses from Spain who Marcel Jordan Horse Transport had delivered them in fantastic condition and she had received daily photos and reports of the horses. There were so many good reports about the company that I knew it was the one to go for! 

Despite the slight miscommunication with their office about whether there was space for someone to travel with the horses (they didn’t confirm if there was space until 3 days beforehand so I didn’t have much time to pack my own stuff!!) I would highly recommend this company to anyone transporting their horses across Europe. The horses get fed and watered every four and a half hours and on Sunday they got to rest for 3 hours at a ‘horse hotel’ where they could get hand walked too. If you don’t travel with the horses, then the driver also sends you daily - if not twice daily - photos and messages about your horse, how they are travelling and how they are doing.

We left the yard at 2.30pm and drove to the port of Naantali for the 10pm ferry towards Kapellskär.  Before they got on the ferry the horses were fed and watered again, and then they were checked both 10pm and the driver checked on them in the middle of the night! Once we arrived in Sweden, they were fed and watered again and then we started the 800+ kilometre drive down Sweden towards the port of Malmö. I have never been so bored in my entire life as I was during Saturday! For someone who is used to doing LOTS every day, sitting still for 10 hours was hellish - it felt like we would never reach Malmö. Despite the frequent stops to check on the horses, I was so twitchy as my body was used to riding lots and doing physical work, rather than just sitting on my butt all day. But eventually we reached Malmö and luckily the driver was great company!

At least the views were STUNNING!

We had another over night ferry ride, this time from Malmö to Travemunde which meant we arrived in Germany at 7am and another 5am wake up call for me... And then had a 6 hour drive to my brother's yard in Menden. Luck was on our side as there were no major traffic queues as Germany is notorious for having THE worst queues because of road works and accidents. Apart from the satnav making the last 10 minutes of the drive to the yard a bit exciting (it took us down the wrong road, and  all I'm going to say is that the driver had mad reversing skills!) the drive to the yard was smooth sailing and we arrived by early afternoon. And boy was it HOT!!! +29C degrees - what a welcome! After unpacking the lorry, I had to bath all the horses to get rid of the last two days worth of sweat and dirt, and once they had all recovered a little bit they went on the horse walker for 10 minutes. They've all settled really well, the only one who is not 100% chilled out yet is Basse... For some reason he's still not convinced that we are here to stay and he still feels the need to shout after everyone. But I'm sure he'll calm down soon, and he'll for sure relax once he's back in work. I'm so excited to start riding all the horses again, it's so inspiring and motivating being here!