This poor Fiat 680 DTH was sent to the Welsh hills for a quiet retirement, according to farmer’s son Conor Haydon.

“Our small hill farm in Wales is predominantly occupied by sheep. It seems like the perfect place to send outdated machinery to gracefully and quietly retire.”

In fact, the challenges it was about to face were far worse than anything it had seen before.

“It was a fairly wet day, too wet to do sheep, but just OK for Dad to happily spread fertiliser to pass the time.

“Usually the steep hills are child’s play for the tractor (when in 4wd).”

But trouble began when Mr Haydon reached the top of the hill and started to turn around.

 “Suddenly it started to slide, ever gaining in speed, heading straight for a road.”

“10 seconds passed before Dad realised 4wd was disengaged. Discovering that he slammed the front wheels into motion causing them to bite at just the wrong moment and the tractor ended up belly-up in the grass.”

Fortunately Mr Haydon only suffered a minor bruising and a cut finger. He was apparently more upset that he had just dumped 600kg of fertiliser in a big heap in the field.

As is often the case, innocent bystanders get used as scapegoats. Son Conor copped an earful as it was him that thought it best that 4wd was not left in gear all the time.

This wasn’t the first time that the Fiat had been involved in such an incident.

“My family could soon find laughter in the incident as it occurred only weeks after Dad had written off our ATV doing exactly the same thing,” recounts Conor.

“He had got the quad-bike stuck and he thought he would take matters into his own hands and try to rescue it with the tractor. But again he slid down the hill, crushing the still running ATV.”

“Overall it wasn’t a very good month from him: narrowly escaping two accidents with a serious dent in his pride and having to fork out for two new pieces of kit!”

Caught any hilarious acts of machine wrecking on camera? Send your pictures, along with a brief explanation, to fwmachinery@rbi.co.uk