Which Riding Boots Should a Beginner Buy

A beginner needs a jodhpur boot: a short ankle boot with a small heel and a sole without deep lugs. That is what riding schools ask for and it is the least money you can spend on a boot that works. Ours is the Gaia at £26.95 for children and £29.95 for adults. Long boots come later, if you find you are riding every week, and half chaps over a jodhpur boot bridge the gap for years.

We make riding boots, so this guide has an interest to declare. We have written it as the answer we give at the counter when someone asks what to buy for a first lesson, which is not always our boot and is never our most expensive one. Where a fact comes from somewhere other than us, we say where.

What a riding boot has to do

Before the three routes, the one piece of reasoning everything else rests on. Your foot sits in a stirrup, a metal loop with a flat bar at the bottom. If you come off, the foot has to leave the stirrup cleanly. Two things stop it. A sole with no heel lets the foot slide forward through the loop until the ankle jams. A sole with deep, soft lugs can grip the bar and hold the foot in. A riding boot answers both problems: a defined step at the heel that the bar cannot pass, and a sole with enough tread to walk on a wet yard but no deep lugs to catch.

That is the whole test. A boot that passes it is a riding boot, whatever it costs. A boot that fails it is not, whatever it costs. Riding schools apply the test at the mounting block, which is why most will send a rider in trainers back to the car and why a walking boot, with its heavy tread, is turned away as often as a trainer is. For the longer version, with the reasons riders are told to avoid wellies and walking boots, there is a separate guide: can you ride in wellies or walking boots.

The second thing a beginner's boot has to do is cover the ankle. Stirrup leathers rub, and the inside of the leg does a lot of work in the first months while the position is still being learned. A short boot covers the ankle bone and stops there; a tall boot covers the whole lower leg. Both do the job for a lesson. The difference is comfort, cost and what happens in the years after.

Route one: the lowest-cost pair that works

For most beginners this is the right answer, and it is the one we give first.

Buy a jodhpur boot. Nothing else. Ride in it with jodhpurs, riding tights or plain leggings, and borrow the school's hat until you know you are carrying on. A jodhpur boot is the short, ankle-height boot that riders have worn for lessons for a century, and there is nothing a beginner does in the first year that it cannot do.

Ours is the Gaia. The children's boot is £26.95 in child UK 10 to UK 3, the adult boot £29.95 in UK 4 to UK 8 (EU 37, 38, 39, 41 and 42, and there is no EU 40 in the range, so UK 6 is EU 39 and UK 7 is EU 41). The upper is vegan synthetic leather, so it wipes clean after a wet lesson and needs no polish. An elasticated panel on each side and a loop at the back mean it pulls on and off in seconds, which matters more than it sounds with a child who is late for a lesson. The ankle and the insole are padded. The sole is rubber with a low block heel. It is water-resistant up to the elasticated ankle, which is enough for an arena and a wet car park; it is not a boot for standing in water, and it does not claim to be.

What you are not getting at this price is leather, a waterproof lining or a boot built for a full day on a yard. We are open about that because the boots that do those things, our Atlas and Hera, cost two and three times as much, and nobody needs them for lesson one.

Total spend on this route: £26.95 for a child, £29.95 for an adult. If the size is wrong, every product has 90-day easy returns, on top of your statutory rights. How to choose the size, and why there is no EU 40, is on the size guide.

Is a boot at this price any good?

People ask this in one of two ways: is it safe, and will it last. On the first, a Gaia has the heel and the sole a riding boot needs, and that does not change with price. On the second, we make no claim about how long our boots last, because we have no data yet on our own boots and would rather say so than guess. What we can say is that a synthetic upper does not crack the way neglected leather does, and that the boot is built to be wiped clean rather than looked after.

For scale, Just Horse Riders stocks boots from other makers as well as ours. On 7 September 2026 it had 64 adult jodhpur boots from other brands in stock, from £18.74 to £240.00, with a middle price of £41.59; and 28 children's jodhpur boots, from £14.23 to £85.00, with a middle price of £29.23. Gaia sits below the middle on both counts. Those figures are one retailer's shelf on one date, not the whole market, and we re-check them rather than leaving them to go stale.

Route two: the pair most people end up with

Most riders who carry on past the first term settle into the same combination: a jodhpur boot with a pair of half chaps over the top.

Half chaps are a zip-up gaiter that covers the lower leg from the ankle to just under the knee, worn over a jodhpur boot. Together they do what a tall boot does, covering the calf against the stirrup leather and giving the lower leg the close contact a rider wants against the saddle, for less money than a tall boot and with the short boot still usable on its own. They are sized by calf and by height, so they fit a leg that a tall boot does not, and when a child grows out of one part you replace that part rather than the whole boot.

We do not make half chaps. Just Horse Riders, the retailer behind this brand, stocks them from several makers. Whether to go this way or straight to a tall boot, and when to move up, is the subject of its own guide: jodhpur boots or long boots, and when to move up.

For a child, this route also usually means riding tights rather than jodhpurs. Our Aiya riding tights are £24.95 for the plain pair and £29.95 for the Unicorn and Rock N Roll prints, sized by waist from 20 to 28 inches, with a silicone grip on the seat and the inside of the leg.

Total spend on this route: the Gaia, plus half chaps from a tack shop when you are ready for them, plus tights or jodhpurs. For a child in Gaia boots and plain Aiya tights that is £51.90, and because that is over £50, UK delivery is free.

Route three: the boot to buy if you know you will keep riding

Some people arrive at the first lesson already knowing. They rode as a child and are coming back, or the child has been asking for two years and has just been given a weekly slot, or a horse is already on loan. For them the question is different: not what is the least I can spend, but what will I want to be wearing a year from now.

The answer is a tall boot, and the reason is not appearance. A tall boot puts a single smooth panel of material between the leg and the saddle from ankle to knee. There is no seam where a half chap meets a boot, no zip to catch on the stirrup leather, and the boot moves with the leg as one piece. Most riders who school regularly, hack out and go to shows end up in one.

Ours is the Athena. It is a zip-back tall boot in vegan synthetic leather, with a stretch panel in the calf, a padded interior and a cushioned sole, and a rubber sole. The adult boot comes in UK 4 to UK 9 in a Standard or a Wide calf; Wide covers calves from 39 cm at UK 4 up to 45.5 cm at UK 9, which makes it a wide-calf riding boot under £60. The children's boot comes in UK 10 to UK 3 in one width. It is made for lessons, schooling, hacking and lower-level shows, and it is not a leather boot, a waterproof boot or a yard boot. The current prices are on the Athena page. The adult boot is £59.95 and the children's boot £49.95.

Two cautions before taking this route. A tall boot has to fit at the calf as well as the foot, and a beginner's calf is measured with a tape, not guessed; the method and the tables are on the size guide. And a child's calf and foot both grow, so a tall boot for a young child may be a boot for one season. The Gaia and half chaps route exists for exactly that reason.

On price, ours is one of the lower-cost tall boots you will find. On 7 September 2026, Just Horse Riders had 22 adult tall riding boots from other makers in stock, from £59.62 to £187.65, with a middle price of £102.91. Athena costs well under that middle price at either of the prices being considered for it. What that buys you and what it does not is set out honestly on the compare page, which puts every boot we make in one table.

The three routes side by side

Three ways to buy a first pair of riding boots

Route	What you buy	Spend on boots	Right for	Trade-off
One: the least that works	Gaia children's or Gaia adults jodhpur boots	£26.95 child, £29.95 adult	A first block of lessons; anyone not yet sure riding will stick	Synthetic, water-resistant not waterproof; calf uncovered above the ankle
Two: what most people end up with	Gaia jodhpur boots plus half chaps from a tack shop	Gaia as above; half chaps extra	Weekly lessons; growing children; riders who want one short boot for everything	A seam and a zip where the chap meets the boot; two items to keep track of
Three: you know you will keep riding	Athena adults or Athena children's tall boots	See the Athena page	Returning riders; regular schooling, hacking, first shows; a wide calf	Costs more; must fit at the calf; a child may outgrow it in a season

Whichever route, the hat is separate and comes first. We do not sell hats. Borrow the school's for the early lessons and, when you buy, have it fitted at a tack shop and check it carries a current standard; the list, quoted from the British Horse Society and dated, is in our guide to what to wear to a first riding lesson.

Things that are not worth paying for yet

• Leather. Leather boots look and feel lovely, need polishing and drying out, and cost more. A beginner in an arena twice a month gets nothing from leather that a synthetic boot does not give them. Our leather boot, the Hera, is a country boot for wet yards and long days, and it is the wrong first purchase for almost everyone. The case for and against synthetic is made properly in are synthetic riding boots any good.
• Waterproofing. A lesson happens in an arena. A boot that is water-resistant to the ankle copes with the walk from the car. Pay for waterproof when you have a yard to muck out, and buy a yard boot for it rather than expecting a riding boot to do both.
• A show boot. If a show is coming, the school or the branch will tell you what it wants. Until then a plain black boot is correct everywhere.
• Spare pairs. One pair, kept wiped clean, is all a beginner needs. Buy the second pair when the first has told you what you like.

Getting the size right first time

Size is the thing worth spending five minutes on. Measure the foot standing, on a hard floor, in the socks you will ride in, and buy the boot for the longer foot. Our adult ladder skips EU 40: UK 6 is EU 39, UK 7 is EU 41, and if another make puts you in an EU 40, there is no EU 40 here, so compare foot length rather than pick the nearer number. Children's sizes skip EU 29 and EU 36 in the same way. A jodhpur boot should be snug at the ankle and free at the toe; a tall boot must also be measured at the calf and for height, and the size guide holds every table so this page does not have to repeat them.

Try the boots on indoors, walk around, and if anything pinches send them back inside the 90 days. A boot that hurts on day one does not soften into a boot that fits; a boot in the right size fits on day one.

Breaking in

Leather riding boots usually need breaking in, and a new leather tall boot in particular is stiff at the ankle for the first rides. A synthetic upper like the Gaia's has no stiff leather to soften and the side panels are elasticated, so there is less to break in, but we have not tested how much wearing in the Gaia needs and we do not claim it needs none. If a boot is uncomfortable on the first wear, treat it as a sizing question first and use the returns.

Who wrote this

Englander Equestrian is the own brand of Just Horse Riders, a family-run Lancashire retailer that has sold riding kit since 2010. We sold other makers' riding boots for over a decade and watched the prices climb, and we started making our own so that the cost of a pair of boots is not the reason someone stops riding. We still stock the brands we are compared with, which is where the price figures on this page come from.

Related

• Compare every Englander Equestrian boot
• Gaia jodhpur boots
• Athena tall boots
• Size guide
• Guide: What to wear to your first riding lesson
• Guide: Jodhpur boots or long boots, and when to move up
• Guide: Are synthetic riding boots any good

All prices include VAT. Gaia and Aiya prices checked on the store on 18 September 2026; other makers' prices read from the Just Horse Riders catalogue on 7 September 2026.