A British holidaymaker enjoying a boat trip in the Mediterranean was stunned when he filmed a bloke riding a horse next to them in the sea. Ben Hancock, 26, witnessed the ‘strange’ sight during his stop in Malta as part of his two-week cruise with his wife Olivia last month.
The couple went on a five-euro boat ride around the historical village of Marsaxlokk, which is known for its harbour full of colourful wooden boats with ‘eyes’ drawn on the front of them. As they took photos of the sights, they were stunned to spot just the heads of a man and a horse bobbing between the boats in the middle of the harbour.
Ben’s bizarre video shows the man in ‘his normal clothes’ on the horse’s back, while the horse was apparently ‘struggling’ to stay afloat in the deep water. When the baffled tourists asked the rider the reason he was in the middle of the harbour with his horse, he reportedly told them that is how they train horses for the races.
Ben, a content manager, said that everyone’s attention was drawn away from the pretty village’s usual sights and instead focused on the “crazy” antics in the water. Ben, from Burnley, Lancashire, said: “The horse was galloping, it was really deep water. They wouldn’t have been touching the ground. It looked like the horse was struggling.
“We were so taken aback. The guy looked like it was a normal day for him, like nothing was happening. He was in his normal clothes, like he was going to the shop.
“We were laughing our heads off. It was so random and unexpected to everyone on the boat.
“We stopped looking at all of the historic sights and just focused on that for as long as we could see it because it was so crazy. It was the highlight of our whole holiday, not just the boat trip.”
Ben admitted that the training method seemed ‘extreme’ compared to the methods for horse training used in the UK. Ben said: “If the horse stops or goes over to the sides it will die, so it is pretty extreme. That seems stupid to me, but maybe it’s a traditional thing.
“In England, horse training is very orderly and very posh. You go to a stable, in a nice suit, not in the sea. It was very random and strange.”