I Went Horse-Back Riding In Italy So You Didn’t Have To

My butt is pissed at me

Photo by Roger van de Kimmenade on Unsplash

Let me preface this by saying that I live in Italy.

Now, I know that it tends to conjure up pictures of charming Palladian villas, red rooftops and rosemary bushes gently swaying in the wind, framing a glimpse of cornflower-blue sea.

I don’t live in the glamorous part of Italy you see in travel brochures, though.

Yeah, sure, my area has its fair share of verdant hills and vineyards, a few Romanesque churches scattered around and some nice little medieval towns here and there; but the local economy (far from relying only on wine and chese-making, as the local tourism office would make you believe) thrives off ceramic industries, car manufacturing — and, above all, pig farming.

Now, don’t get fooled by the pastoral vibe the word ‘farming’ gives off — raising pigs is a nasty business: you see, pigs stink. A lot. No matter what you do, no matter how clean your pigsty is, you can smell it from kilometers away — or, for my non-metric friends, from miles away. I don’t even work in farming — hell, I’m a civil registrar — and yet my life seems to somehow revolve around pigs anyway.

I still love the countryside, so during the summer I had the bright idea to go and see a more conventionally…