TEXAS
Rides take you up and around the Texas hills, and walking on flat ground, your body relaxes, swaying in time with the horse, as you catch glimpses of your shadow riding alongside, wearing its cowboy hat. But admiring the scenery can wait when you’re clambering up steep, rocky terrain, solely focused on trying to stay in the saddle. And long trousers are advised for those times when your horse clippity-clops through bushes and thorns with nary a thought for its rider. One morning, we head out early and breakfast is prepared for us on a hilltop. This gives us time to really admire the countryside, which we decide is not unlike Scotland; just a lot drier and a bit less green. After the day’s ride, we’re allowed to feed the horses, help brush them and one evening, even assist with unsaddling. The wranglers look like standard movie cowboys, and more than once it crosses my mind they might be hamming it up a bit with the hats, boots and spurs. But after a day or two, I’m convinced they’re the real thing. While the daily riding was the highlight of our week, the rest of the holiday felt like staying with friends. Case in point, we wanted to go into Bandera for the Labor Day weekend festivities but couldn’t get a taxi, so had resigned ourselves to missing out, then Clay Conoly, the ranch owner got wind of our predicament. “I’ll take you in myself,” he offered. Car service isn’t something the ranch normally provides, but as he had time, he said it was no trouble and, as an added bonus, along the way, he told us a bit about the 725-acre ranch, built in 1901 by his great grandfather and opened to the public in 1937. Bandera is a small town with a strong community feel and the woman at the visitor centre spoke to us at length about where to go and what to see. So we caught a live gunfight show, some singing, and dropped into a local bar to play pool and sample a bottle or two of Lone Star beer. Later in the evening we also attended a rodeo and Clay kindly arranged for us to be collected and driven home. Turns out there’s more to being a cowboy than the hat and boots. The Dixie Dude Ranch was a holiday like no other, from home-cooked meals three times a day to close encounters with longhorns on a twilight hayride, it was an experience we would not have had in a hotel. In a hotel, there’s a distance between guests and staff. At the ranch, from the moment we arrived, we were treated with a genuine warmth, that didn’t waver for our entire stay.
Dixie Dude Ranch guest cabin
From left to right: longhorn cattle; Spanish goats
Never too young to be a cowboy
Bandera ‘Cowboy Capital of the World’
the lowdown
HOW TO GET THERE Direct UK flights to Austin from 10 hours, 15 minutes Austin to Dixie Dude Ranch from 2 hours, 35 minutes WHERE TO STAY Dixie Dude Ranch, 7-night stay (2 adults, 2 children) from £3,312 per week Including: 3 home-cooked meals per day; 2 horseback rides per day; evening entertainment and ranch activities. dixieduderanch.com
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