Driving Experiences

Drive a combine harvester in Wiltshire! Yep, you did read that right. We have found someone willing to let you have a go in their very expensive combine harvesting machine. And it’s as impressive as you’ll have always imagined!

The John Deere T600 Hillmaster is a total harvesting overlord. This huge machine means business. Sitting pretty with that distinctive bright green and yellow John Deere livery, this combine weighs in at 15 tons. The cutting head is a whopping 25ft wide and weighs 2.5 tons alone.

Under the bonnet (do combine harvesters even have bonnets?) is a 9l, six cylinder, twin-turbo engine worthy of any supercar. All that torque and power combines to be a super-efficient harvesting machine out in the fields of this training farm near Devizes in Wiltshire.

Just getting up close to one of these behemoths is impressive, so imagine the excitement when you climb into that cab. Spacious, comfortable and full of driver aids such as GPS, yield mapping and auto steer, it’s an amazing office!

As well as driving this Wiltshire’s training school’s combine harvester, you’ll also learn more about the controls. Hear the clatter of the thresher when you start it up. Learn how to raise and lower the cutting head. Open up the ‘bomb doors’ of the vast grain tank behind your cab and have a go at rotating the auger (that’s the orientable ‘pipe’ that loads the grain into the grain trailer).

You’ll also be shown the GPS functions, auto steer technology and yield mapping abilities of these John Deeres, which make the long, tiring and intense job of harvesting a lot easier. Oh and you can raise the whole machine up and down, which is very cool too!

A word of advice if you want to drive a combine harvester in Wiltshire: make sure you get booked in well in advance, as these agricultural plant experiences are hugely popular – and they are not available at harvest time, as the John Deere six series is doing its day job of reaping what has been sown in the fields of Devizes!

This junior tractor experience in Wiltshire is just for the kids! Youngsters aged between 13 and 16 will absolutely love going down to the farm to take a tractor or two out for a spin around this farm estate.

The Butler family farms over 500 acres of mainly arable land. Crops include grains such as oats, oil rapeseed and beans.  But that’s just part of the business. Farmer John and Farmer Luke teach people how to drive all sorts of agricultural machinery, including the farm’s main tractors.

The kids only tractor driving experience at this Wiltshire farm has been a massive hit with children. After all, who wouldn’t want to climb onboard a massive tractor and trundle off around the paddocks, stores and fields, finding out what it’s like to use one of these amazing beautiful beasts every day?

Let’s start with the modern tractor. The best thing about the John Deere is how easy it is to drive. It’s child’s play. With its distinctive green bodywork and bright yellow wheel hubs, the John Deere is fully automatic, has GPS guided steering and a funky touchscreen main control panel. It’s more like a spaceship than a tractor inside the cab!

The bright red CASE tractor is a classic.  It might well have been built before the kids driving it were born, but the teens love this machine. They’re great fun to drive and are more involved, as they have a manual gearbox. They’re pretty robust, so they can withstand a few gear crunches from over enthusiastic kids!

We are offering experiences to drive either one of the tractors or both. Little farmers will get around 25-minutes at the wheel of each tractor they drive, in which time they’ll follow the special kids circuit, which may well include some tricky reversing tasks too. Book a junior tractor experience and get your teens out in the fresh air on this Wiltshire training farm.

Want to go tractor driving in Wiltshire? You’ve come to the right place. Tractors are the workhorses of the land and we salute them with these brilliant tractor driving experiences on a working farm and agricultural training centre in Wiltshire

The land on and around Rowdefield has been farmed by the Butler family since 1860. Today there are around 500 acres, with a trio of tractors working the land. But farmer John (the current Butler in charge!) also has a decade of experience teaching agriculture and business, which is why he decided to offer training courses in all things agriculture (from tree felling to tractor driving) at his Wiltshire farm.

We have put together these tractor driving experiences so you can have go at driving these amazing vehicles. And what a pair of tractors we’ve got lined up for you. In the 80s when most of us were watching the A Team and Grange Hill, the Case International 1455XL was out in the fields smashing it. This German-built tractor was legendary in farming circles. Rugged, pretty much bullet-proof and powerful enough to pull a house down they used to say!

Fast forward to present day farm machinery and the John Deere 6 series is the shining star of ploughing, drilling, bailing, shifting, lifting – whatever you want it do. This green giant of a tractor is the powerful 195bhp (yes, we know that IS a lot more than you’d think for a tractor isn’t it?), 6.8l engine 6R195 model. Inside the cab is high-tech, with automatic gears, electronic controls and even GPS guided steering.

And don’t forget, this is a training farm, so you will be experiencing at first hand the natural habitat of these impressive machines, with an experienced teacher guiding you as you go.

Whilst we might not fancy getting up at 4am at harvest time, we have to admit that the idea of being able to drive a proper tractor on a proper farm is an opportunity we couldn’t miss and we think you’ll love it too. Book your tractor driving experience in Wiltshire at this Devizes farm and see for yourself just how big, capable and fun to drive these tractors are.