Saddle up to ride out the stresses of city life

In the countryside they're part of the scenery, something you expect.

In a city they're unexpected lumps of animated nature, reminders of a past when urban life was more visibly dependent on large four-legged beasts.

Yet it is even better to be on a horse in a city. You feel like a minor celebrity, with people turning heads, cars slowing and passing with exaggerated courtesy, tourists snapping and children indulging that ancient primal urge to yell "horsey".

My own experience of riding is as an equine dunce, scarred almost for life by Pony Club battleaxes in my rural childhood who would roar: "I can see the whole of Sussex through your knees." (Which, as you are supposed to keep your knees in contact with the horse, is a bad thing.)

I became a vicarious rider, preferring to watch other people do the hard work from the safety of the grandstands at Sandown Park and Newmarket.

I got back in the saddle when my daughters started riding, and now go with my youngest to Aldersbrook Riding School, an unexpectedly bucolic spot on Wanstead Flats.

There are allotments on one side and a pond on the other, and the stables themselves are a picturesque assortment of horse boxes and post-war prefabs which, seen through half-closed eyes, could almost be a rural scene in a 19th-century painting.

The school has been run for 36 years by the now-septuagenarian Ida Thorne.

We make it there about every other Sunday, not enough to become seriously good but enough to make a discernable improvement.

It is a less anxious experience than it was in Sussex long ago, as I am less nervous of the animals.

It helps to realise that horses are tamed mammals, essentially larger versions of dogs, cats, or hamsters, with comparable mental complexity. They respond to simple things, like being patted.

I am also less scared of the instructors, who are more polite than they used to be, if still forthright. I will miss Noel, who like most horse people is an individual character.

He has just given up after 30 years of teaching riding to pursue his vocation as a Shakespearean actor.

His ability to gaze at the ground, seemingly oblivious, before delivering pithy remarks on your actions, will transfer well to his new career.

Aldersbrook is a long way, in every sense, from Hyde Park, which is the most glamorous place to ride in London.

The park, once a royal hunting ground, was made for the horse and is crossed by the long straight dirt track of Rotten Row, originally Route de Roi, which invites you to get up serious speed.

The Household Cavalry train here, and if it's good enough for them it's good enough for most riders.

You feel privileged to ride there. The only snags are cost - £79 for an hour's individual tuition compared with £35 at Aldersbrook - and the high risk of annihilating toddlers and tourists, or your horse, should you lose control.

For this reason you are firmly held with a leading rein by a capable instructor until you can prove yourself fully able to manage your mount.

This is a tad deflating to the ego, like riding a bike with stabilisers, and fantasies of charging up Rotten Row have to be put on hold.

But if you keep going, and paying, you will get to do it in the end.

Two stables offer riding around Hyde Park, both placed in a little mews to the north.

One, Hyde Park Stables, was established in 1835 and has been run since 1974 by the colourful Richard Briggs.

A man of strong opinions, he states that "we're at the front of everything" and "we have the highest ratio of staff to customers". Certainly my ride from his stable was impressively professional.

"Horses" says Briggs, "are great big furry stress relievers," and he is passionate about their benefits to the "computer generation".

"You should have horses in every school in the country - think about them as tools for rehabilitation."

Much of his business comes from "chauffeur-driven executives who don't want to be happy hackers.

"The only trouble is they're in a hurry. You've got to be at one with the horse. You've got to take time."

Riding in London is a little perverse. Unless money is no object it's hard to spend enough time with a horse to get really good.

It has come under pressure, both from the cost of insurance and of property: a couple of horses take up as much real estate as might otherwise make a bijou pad for a young banker.

It is to the credit of people like Briggs that they don't cash in the millions they could raise just by selling their stables.

But riding in London is also an experience as varied as the city.

There are the broad expanses of Richmond Park and Epping Forest, as well as Hyde Park and Aldersbrook.

You can ride in the grittier environs of the Lea Valley, under the Westway or in suburbs like Bexleyheath.

You also get to meet the people who work with horses, who are rarely dull.