A friend is moving to Coral Gables and is looking for a stable. Preferably a pleasure barn with access to trails. Thanks for any help
Coral Gables isn’t a super well-known area (at least with people I know). It might help to put “(near Miami)” in your title, as Miami is a mere 6 miles away.
Coral Gables is in Dade County and there won’t be any stables or horses there. You would need to go south to Kendell or Homestead to find barns and trail access is limited in Dade County. They mostly ride alongside canals and through dirt fields. If you are willing to go further north to Broward County, Davie is your best bet as it has lots of barns and a great urban trail system that the local club, the South Fla Trail Riders have developed.
Coral Gables is EASTERN Miami. You have to go west to get any open space. Davie, Southwest Ranches, etc in western Broward; Redlands, Homestead, Kendall in Dade County.
I live there. Whereas there used to be a lot of hunters and jumpers in the southwest portion of Miami Dade County, about a 30 minute drive from Coral Gables, (a) most of it has moved to Broward County, in the area of Davie and Southwest Ranches (replaced by Paso Fino barns, to a large degree) and (b) there are zero trails in Miami Dade County. All of the “trail rides” would be along the swales adjacent to residential streets.
In Broward County, there are some parks in which you can have a nice day of trail riding. Treetops park in Davie is among the best, but you would need a trailer to bring your horse to the park (There is one barn that is literally located adjacent to the park, and you could ride straight from your stables into the park, but I cannot recall its name. It is not a show barn, but simply a boarding/pleasure stable).
Otherwise, Davie does have something called the Davie trail system. It is comprised of miles of areas in which horses can be ridden, but much of it is along canal sides and through residential neighborhoods. You can google it and see where the trails are. There are a few show barns and probably tons of backyard barns that are adjacent to the trail system and you could ride right from your stables out into the “trails”, such as they are.
The South Florida trail riders Association has chapters in Miami Dade County and Broward County. May be best to contact them in Broward County, I have found they are quite accessible and ready to answer questions. They have lots of long trail rides combined with barbecues and parties.
Personally, I board my horse at a show barn in Southwest ranches and it takes about 30-35 minutes to get from my house to the barn. I’m very happy with my boarding situation but I do wish we had more access to proper trails. We do ride out throughout the neighborhood and just go along the roads, visiting the neighbors, but it’s not a “trail ride” as we would like to have. And for almost no trail riding, what’s the trade-off? All that lovely riding in November, December, January, February and March while the rest of you are freezing !!
As others have said there are no barns in coral gables. It is very much in Miami and there is not much open land. Kendall is the closest place that will have horse boarding but except for one or two facilities that are almost impossible to get into I would not recommend any of the barns there. It is not a nice area.
Davie/southwest ranches is much nicer and has a pretty nice trail system. The parks are all interconnected and the SFTR can show her how to access that. There is at least one boarding barn on tree tops and two on Robbins which connects to miles of trails.
Davie also has a public arena and many parks with horse troughs, corrals, places to ride, etc. It’s really a nice area. If your friend hasn’t bought in coral gables yet I would actually recommend her looking up in broward because it’s much much nicer that Miami
(lived in both Miami and davie.)
