Arable Fenland farmer has wheat-filled trailer stolen and later found in Whittlesey

ARABLE farmer George Martin was struggling to combine his winter wheat acreage and finished too late to take the grain trailer home in safety.

So, he left the blue Marston trailer, filled with 10 tonnes of feed wheat, inside a field by a house when he finished at 1am last Wednesday. When he returned at 9am later that morning, it had gone.

Fortunately, after alerting Cambridgeshire Countryside Watch and police, the 10-tonne monocoque trailer was recovered in a lay-by six miles away at Whittlesey later that day, still containing about one tonne of grain.

Mr Martin, of King’s Delph Drove, said: “We were combining until 1am and baling straw until about 2am. A neighbour who finished at 3am saw nothing.

“It must have been taken between 2am and 5am when it was seen by a local farmer’s son, when it was dumped.”

The blue AS Marston trailer, with registration, AE06 ZAH, had been in the field since 3pm that day. The grain stolen was worth about �1,200.

Mr Martin said: “When I told our NFU secretary, Stuart Bish at Peterborough, he had never heard of anything like this in his 40 years.

“If police find the wheat, we could identify it because I’ve taken a sample and it could be matched.”

Mr Martin added: “I must congratulate police and Countryside Watch. I told them at 9.30am and had a call at 2.30pm to say that it was in the lay-by.”