There we were, driving sideways at 40 – 50mph with the back end hanging out and great chunks of mud flinging in an arc behind us and huge grins on our faces when my neighbour pointed over to a little gully and said “go through that”… and so we did.

Now, being a farmer he should have known better (I’m laying the blame for this squarely on his shoulders!) and as we tried to pull our way out of the quagmire we got stuck.

In this small dip/gulley was an underground stream and this had turned the area into a bog and we were firmly stuck. At first we just tried to rock our way out in low range and difflock, then we tried winching, but unfortunately there was nothing to winch off apart from a few trees at the very end of the wire so we had to do a single line pull. This got us a few inches further forward but we were digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the mud.

As we weren’t planning on doing anything silly, I had left the spade, jack and sand ladders back in the garage and all we had were our hands. We tried digging our way out as much as possible and stuffing sticks under the wheels but even with the winch and mud tyres it wasn’t working, so we gave up and phoned the wife who came and collected Steve, drove him home so he could feed the cows and then bring the tractor back and tow me out.

Further pictures in the “Proper Stuck Gallery”

And no, I don’t really blame Steve

We were just about to go and get the tractor to pull us out when we got free, so drove around for a bit then went shooting. Really must get new tyres as these General Grabbers are useless offroad.

Picked up some grease gun cartridges for doing the UJ’s and sliding joints once I have hosed the cow muck off the underside.