The Heckington Show does not appear to change much year-on-year and when you have got a successful formula which can trace its history back over 140 years, I guess you don’t need to change a lot. However, one thing we did notice this year was that the general mixed vintage tractors and vehicles were arranged at an angle or on-the-slant this year, which must help with access on and off the peg to parade.

Our man in the field, who is closer to the furrow than most, paid a visit to the ploughing field and commented that the horticultural plots had been made out across rather than along the furrow as for the big tractor boys. This was not going down too well with the few garden tractor boys, but I guess that is the sort of thing that separates the men from the boys. Suffice to say that at the time he left, they were still contemplating the job in hand rather than making a start.

Back on the stationary engine line, we’d either made an earlier start, not took so long over our breakfast at the Chill-Out café, benefitted from the short-cut into the show-field or others were just plain later getting there as we were much further up the line than is our custom. There was a very good mix of engines on show with all the popular vertical enclosed crank engines such as Lister, Petter, Bamford, Ruston Hornsby & Fowler on show. There was also a good variety of horizontal engines, both enclosed and open cranks, with examples of Amanco, Ruston Hornsby, Bentall, Bamford, Ingeco and other rarer machines.

The Boston Classic Car Club had their own customary area tucked away and although a little fewer in number still had examples of Jaguar, Ford, MG, Hillman, Rover, Austin, Morris, Triumph, Humber, Rolls Royce, Wolseley & Armstrong Siddely. Elsewhere, a magnificent pair of early Rolls Royces generated much interest, and other Rootes Group and Vauxhall cars added to the variety on show.

The commercial vehicles are scattered around with mainly a few light commercials in the vintage section, but search around and other examples can be found. The showmen, for instance, usually have a few ERFs and Fodens as motive power, the tractor transport park throws up the odd Bedford or Ford Cargo, but the stars this year was the pair of Lincoln Co-op Society Morris vans.

Tractor wise, the popular British and American makes were all present, including Ford & Fordson, Caterpillar, Minneapolis Moline, David Brown, Ferguson & Massey Ferguson, International, Massey Harris, Leyland, Nuffield, Track Marshall, Field Marshall, Case, Farmall, John Deere as well as European makes such as Eicher, Deutz, Porsche and Universal. There were also displays of steam engines, threshing, horse-drawn equipment round and about, and together with the traditional attractions of the horticultural show, food court, equestrian and livestock classics, antiques fair, trade stands, local & living history fair, make Heckington Show a grand day out.