You've heard about extreme snow sports, extreme skydiving, even extreme fishing.
Now, to make you green with envy, here's "extreme mowing" featuring high-tech grass-cutters from the Aebi Schmidt portfolio handled by Northumberland-based specialists Coatsworth Landscapes.
They recently undertook an action-packed two-day "haircut" of the Naked Lady of Cramlington, known in more polite circles as Northumberlandia, The Lady of the North.
Said to be the world's largest land sculpture in a female form, she measures 34 metres (112ft) high in places and 400 metres (1,300ft) long. Sculpted out of 1.5 million tonnes of earth taken from an adjacent open-cast coal mine, she was officially opened last year in 47 acres of parkland by Princess Anne, and is expected to attract 200,000 visitors a year to Northumberland's countryside.
The "extreme" grass-cutting team from nearby Bedlington took to the landscape aboard two Aebi 210 bank tractors which will be used on the twice-yearly body shave, by Coatsworth Landscapes, along with an Aebi CC 66 with twin wheels and a flail head.
"The bank tractors work brilliantly on all slopes up to 35 degrees," said company managing director David Coatsworth. "And one of our other mowers can tackle anything up to 45 degrees. Then some of the Lady's extremely steep slopes have to be strimmed. They are challenging to tackle even on foot.
"The project takes two days each time and becomes a bit tricky when we have to juggle public access with closing off the areas we're working on. Still, we seem to have added some extra interest for visitors when she's being trimmed. And our lads get a buzz from being part of this special adventure."
David is head of a family firm established after giving up farming 30 years ago. Today, the company specialises in maintenance work throughout the North-East, for factories, hospitals and water authorities. "Mowing this land sculpture is similar to our water board work where we often have to operate on steep dam faces.
"We've been using equipment manufactured by Aebi Schmidt UK for some 20 years. My first piece of their kit was a second-hand TT77. We now have three TT210s and a TT75. We have tried other equipment but we have always found the Aebi machinery to be better suited to our requirements.
"Over the years we have seen a growing importance in road salting and snow ploughing and the agility and traction commanded by the Aebi tractors makes them ideal for this type of work as well."
