Isle of Wight October Walking Festival 2024

25 August 2024

Isle of Wight Autumn Walking Festival

Congratulations to the Isle of Wight Walking Festival; celebrating its 25^th anniversary this year! We’re delighted to be offering two walks that leave from the sanctuary this October.

This October you can join one of our lovely Donkey Sanctuary volunteers Willemina for Isle of Wight Donkey Sanctuary trainline and valley circular walk on Sunday 6 October and Isle of Wight Donkey Sanctuary to Godshill via Appludurcombe and return on Thursday 10 October. They are both filling up quickly, so early booking advised!

Nestled in 55 acres of serene Isle of Wight countryside in the Wroxall valley, our sanctuary is home to over 100 donkeys, ponies, and mules. Throughout the autumn Isle of Wight Walking Festival we’re inviting walkers to visit the sanctuary, meet our herds and enjoy a wander around our site. We’re open 7 days a week from 10am to 4.30pm. We offer free entry and free parking, with several footpaths and a bridleway leading from our land, we’re a great place to start and end a walk. We also welcome well behaved dogs on leads to the Sanctuary. The number 3 and Island Coaster buses stop right outside our gates.

Our café is open daily from 10 am to 4.30pm, serving a range of delicious baguettes to go, fabulous cakes, hot food (until 4.00pm) and more. During the walking festival we’re offering all participants a 10% discount* on food and drink in our café. Why not treat yourself to a bacon bap before you leave and a post-walk cream tea! Gluten free, vegan and vegetarian options available.

To take advantage of the 10% discount, just show a reservation for any autumn Isle of Wight Walking Festival walk when you pay.

We hope you have a wonderful walking festival and look forward to seeing you.

*Offer valid only during the Isle of Wight Walking Festival, 5 to 13 October 2024 and is not available on our afternoon tea.

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Equine Treatment Centre

by abigail.fox • 7 November 2024

In late 2022, we started fundraising to establish an equine clinic at the sanctuary. Thanks to your generosity, we raised £125,000 from the initial campaign. This is ringfenced to spend on the Equine Treatment Centre. In the summer of 2023, we paused fundraising and undertook a separate feasibility study, using the generous free support of a civil engineer. We used this opportunity to make sure our build plans were making the very best use of your donations and the funds we had raised. We’ve tweaked the initial plan and have planning permission to undertake a project that will greatly support our high standards of equine welfare. We plan to: Repurpose an existing structure to house the Equine Treatment Centre thus reducing construction costs. Construct an equine rehabilitation barn on the site originally intended for the clinic. Create an isolation barn at the site’s perimeter. This will mean we can provide the very best care for equines needing isolation for medical treatment or observation. We will focus first on building the new barns, then move on to repurposing existing structures into our Equine Treatment Centre. The work cannot start until spring at the earliest, when we hope the ground will have dried out and the machinery will be able to move around the site. We need to make sure our precious paddocks are well looked after while the building work takes place.