Tractor Driving

Tractors can have high and low ratio, which means a six gear tractor actually has 12 gears (six in low gear, plus six in high gear). This all means your tractor has huge amounts of torque at all speeds, enabling them to lift, shift, plough and do all sorts of useful things around the farm.

The best-known tractor manufacturers include John Deere, Massey Ferguson, New Holland, Case International, Fendt, Deutz-Fahr, Caterpillar and Kubota. You are going to be driving one of these brands on your tractor driving experience.

Both! We have the latest models from the likes of John Deere and vintage 1980s Case tractors for you to drive on these fun sessions too.

Good question! Tractors are actually rear-wheel drive, so all the power is going to those big wheels on the back. Their size helps with grip, traction and weight distribution. The two smaller wheels at the front are for steering, so the smaller size makes them more manoeuvrable. Now you know!

This is one of the most important jobs for a tractor and yes, on some of our experiences you will be doing just that.

On some of our tractor driving experiences you do indeed get the chance to hook up a trailer and tow it with your tractor. Let’s see how you get on with the reversing challenge!

Tractors are the workhorses of the agricultural world and they are powerful with lots of torque even at low speeds. Many tractors are turbocharged and boast 4.5 or even 6.8l engines, with up to 400bhp.

Yes! There are (as you might imagine) endless rules and regulations regarding vehicle identification, lights, signals and even the amount of mud you leave on the road and the number of cars behind you before you should move over to let them pass. But yes, tractors can be driven on public roads..but not motorways.

If you're on a farm it might be muddy, so you need to dress for being outdoors in a possibly muddy environment. But once you're up high in your tractor cab you'll be all nice and cosy in there away from the elements!

Modern tractors usually have either powershift or CVT transmission. Powershift is basically pressing buttons to move up and down the gears. CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) is a clever system whereby you select the speed you need and the tractor does the rest - a bit like cruise control in your car.

You can officially drive a tractor (within a certain size limit) from 16 years old. You have to wait until you’re 18 to be able to drive anything big like a combine harvester though. For these tractor driver experiences the minimum ages vary according to the venue. As they all take place off road, there’s technically no lower age and kids as young as 8 years old can take part at our Essex venue.

Ah now that depends on what you need to do in your tractor! It takes a serious amount of skill to carry out the daily tasks a farmer does with a tractor. Driving the thing is very different to a normal car, but modern tractors are comfortable and relatively easy to drive with lots of driver aids.

The actual driving time depends on each individual experience, but you can count on anything between 15-minutes and 60-minutes at the wheel of your tractor.

Older generation manual transmission tractors do indeed have double clutches. That’s to say, to change gear you have to go into neutral each time. So it’s an ‘into neutral, clutch, into gear, clutch, into neutral, clutch, into gear’ type scenario!

Yes! Take a close look at each listing, as the programme for each experience varies. You could be carrying out all sorts of tasks, from loading hay bales and shifting sacks of animal feed, to hooking up trailers and ploughing a field.

Yes they all take place on actual working farms or on farmland.

No. All experiences take place on private land, where you don’t need to have a licence to drive your tractor.

We have several locations around the UK for you to drive a tractor. The experiences are proving really popular, so make sure you buy your voucher and book well in advance. Get trundling along in your tractor at:

• Essex
• Wiltshire
• Doncaster
• Dumfries