Real Horsepower

Saturday morning was a normal morning except it had snowed and the road into the village is effectively a wind tunnel and 4" of snowfall elsewhere is whipped up to 2' of snow on the only access road in. At around 5.15am I received a call from a neighnour from one of the farms "are you up"; "yes I am"; could you bring your tractor and chain to pull me out because I'm stuck"; "on my way"; when I arrived he was well and truly stuck so we connected his tractor to mine.

Mine is less than a year old and has all the bells and whistles, it automatically engaged 4WD, automatically locks the centre and both axle diff locks as its needed, and it did and it was still skidding everywhere and wouldn't touch his stuck tractor, we tried snatching, manually overriding everything and locking everything, and still it wouldn't touch his stuck tractor.

Thats it, call old Reg and get some real horsepower, about 20 minutes later old Reg came trundling up the lane with three of his Clydesdales, massive horses designed for pulling and hard work, and his do work, the funny thing is that his 4X4 pick up had all the harnesses in and the horses walk like dogs behind it and even obey his commands. After harnessing then he attached them to the front of my tractor which was still attached to the neighbours tractor, he shouted for them to pull and did they pull, their rear ends dropped lower to the ground and they dug in and I shot forwards in the tractor and the neighbours tractor shot backwards and became unstuck. Neither of us had even engaged gear so the tractors were a dead weight of around 13 tonnes combined and this meant nothing to these massive beasts, the moral of the story is sometimes you can't beat real horsepower.

I bet that was a site to behold. Can not beat the real thing.

Being in a small village means we regularly see them, but for such heavy and powerful animals they are just so gentle, watching their immense pulling power never ceases to amaze us though

Shame nobody was around with a camera (I'm assuming), can you imagine the hits that would receive on You Tube?

At that time on a Saturday morning most are still in bed nursing their hangover's, only me and the farmers are up.

Nice to hear a horsey story which does not include tesco or beef burgers.

Maybe the horse is the best 4x4 by far then

4 wheels bad, 4 legs good , 4 wheels bad , 4 legs good

(in homage to George orwells animal farm )

They are fantastic creatures....wish I had been able to witness that. Must have been one of those sights that will stick with you for many a year!

I would have loved to have seen this event as well. However, all is not lost, Next Thursday ITV at 9pm Martin Clunes on Real Horse Power. He has two of his own Clydesdale horses and will be showing all varieties of work horses. The advert looked really impressive so will be a definite watch for me

Hah, you beat me to it, I was going to post the very same thing. Already set the timer to record! As you say, the trailer looked good.

Saw the advert myself last night on something she had recorded, looks like something worth recording as she loves horses, I just end up paying for them, suggested she call Tesco's and she threw cushions at me.

I hear they found Zebra DNA in Sainsbury BAR codes