By the time Pippa Hutton reads this she will be several weeks into a round the world trip that could take her away from Talland School of Equitation in Ampney Knowle, near Cirencester, for as long as a year.

After living and breathing horses for the first 24 years of her life, Pippa has taken a break from all things equestrian and taken time out to explore other things.

“I’m going everywhere,” she said. “Italy, India, South America. I fancied doing something different, I’ve been involved with horses all my life.”

She certainly has… even before she was born.

“My mum was listed for the World Equestrian Games in 1993. When she was six months’ pregnant with me she was still competing internationally,” laughed Pippa, “so I was riding when I was in the womb.”

Mum is Pammy Hutton who runs the Talland School of Equitation with her husband Brian. She was a very good rider back in the day, competing for Great Britain as an eventer before moving onto dressage which is Pippa’s speciality.

“She stopped eventing because she was getting too many broken bones,” said Pippa. “She decided that enough was enough.”

Not that Pippa, who is an instructor at Talland, considers dressage to be for the faint-hearted.

“It’s still risky,” she said. “You are taking a risk every time you get on a horse. Any form of riding is a risky sport.”

Risky sport or not, Pippa and her brother Charlie were always going to be riding from an early age, surrounded as they were by horses.

“We were very lucky,” said Pippa. “We are fourth generation riders. My great-grandmother, my grandmother and my mother all rode and I was riding almost before I could walk.”

Unsurprisingly, given the family pedigree, Pippa took to riding pretty much straight away.

“I started showing and riding side saddle with ponies,” she said.

However, her time on ponies was to be cut short through no fault of her own.

“When I was 12 I tried for the Pony team but I was too tall,” she explained. “I grew out of ponies quite quickly.”

Unperturbed, she moved up to the next level and by 2009 she was good enough to be named as non-travelling reserve for the British dressage team at the European Junior Championships.

Two years later she was part of the team that competed in Denmark and, although they failed to medal, she was the “best of British” as she was the leading GB competitor.

That was to become a recurring theme over the next few years.

She was soon selected for the Young Rider British team that competed in France and just missed out on an individual medal as she led her team-mates home.

And two years ago it was more of the same – albeit at a higher level – because she was again the leading GB competitor, this time for the British under-25 team.

And although she’s now thousands of miles away from the Cotswolds and all things equestrian as she gallops across the globe, she retains plenty of ambition when it comes to the horse world.

As well as hopefully taking over the running of Talland School of Equitation from her parents, she also wants to compete in an Olympic Games.

“One hundred per cent that’s the aim,” she said. “I’ve just retired two top horses – Duela and Belmondo – and I’ve been given a yearling. Maybe I’ll get a horse as well but I’m not in any rush.”

Pippa is certainly looking long-term with her sights set possibly on earning a place at the 2028 Olympics.

If she does make the dream become a reality she will achieve something that her mum never managed to do, although mum was only denied an Olympic chance by a very untimely injury.

All that’s very much in the future of course. More immediately, when Pippa returns from her travels she’ll be able to take up the reins at Talland School of Equitation where she left off in October.

“I love it there,” she said. “We teach riding for the disabled, beginners and top international riders. We’ve got a range of everything and we’ve got some really good instructors.”