Gearing up to feel the pull of tractors

Olive Simpson shakes her head in mock dismay at her husband as she begins preparations for this year’s Beadlam Charity Tractor Run. She’s busy with organising the refreshments with an army of other ladies from the village in the way only country folk can.

Tractor runs have joined village open gardens events and scarecrow festival weeks as part of the new rural calendar in recent years and the Beadlam run is arguably the granddaddy of them all in Yorkshire.

Over 130 tractors had been confirmed for this year’s eleventh such run when I visited earlier this week and it looks likely to exceed the record of 220 of a few years back.

It all came about when former farm worker Bernard Simpson attended the National Tractor Run 12 years ago.

It was the first time he’d experienced anything like it and he was hooked so much that it set him thinking about what could be achieved back home.

“I went down to Cambridgeshire with Olive’s cousin Mike from Gilberdyke. He had a double-seater David Brown tractor and we went on the run with it. I enjoyed the run so much and thought that I could do something similar back home, so I organised the first Beadlam Tractor Run the following year.

“It was nothing like the numbers we get today.

“We had 35 tractors on the inaugural run just by word of mouth and the course we started off with is the same one we use still today going through 19 local villages on a 50-mile route.

“It’s not all about vintage tractors either, we don’t stipulate what kind of tractor can be involved, we just tell people that if they have a tractor then they can come.’

“On the Saturday night, the day before, Olive has a gang of ladies here making sandwiches and the oven is going non-stop the week before with joints of beef and ham.

“We don’t have a cut off date for entries as such, but since we print a catalogue with all of the people’s names and the makes and models of their tractors it’s advisable to get an entry in by April 27.

“It’s £10 to take part and all the money goes to Yorkshire Air Ambulance.’

Bernard is now a self-confessed tractor run enthusiast and attends a handful of other events each year with his 1969 Fordson Dexter, which his eldest son had purchased.

He said: “I put it in the condition it is now and regularly maintain it. I’ve added a springier seat than its original one.

“Other than that it is as it would have been when it was first manufactured.

“I was out last Sunday with nearly 30 others on a run in the North York Moors taking in Glaisdale and Lealholm. I was also able to take a look at Danby Beacon for the first time.’

Bernard has probably travelled more on a tractor than any other form of transportation. He had 26 years on a farm run by Alfred Teasdale in Beadlam and always drove little grey Fergies (Ferguson).

Working with horses rather than tractors is one of Bernard’s earliest farming memories. Born at Harome in 1929 he first started working in woodland at Sproxton before being taken on by mixed farmer George Bulmer.

Although Bernard has been around tractors more or less since their first inception as a commercial machine it is only in these past 11 years that he has developed a real passion for them.

His work in creating the Beadlam Charity Tractor Run has not gone unnoticed. Last year the run raised over £8,000 and to date it has raised over £60,000, and he and Olive were invited to Buckingham Palace in recognition of their fund-raising achievements, by Lord Crathorne.

From personal experience I can tell you that the spectacle as the cavalcade of tractors come down the road alongside the North York Moors railway station in Pickering and turn the corner is worth watching. It takes place on Sunday May 5.