A FORMER Okehampton College pupil will be passing through his home town on a 1950s Ferguson tractor this weekend as a part a rural road run to highlight the importance of rural life.
Howard Yates, who lived at Thorndon Cross between 1969 and 1987, is also raising awareness of Milton Keynes Museum where he is horseman and carter.
His journey started yesterday (Wednesday) from Milton Keynes and he hopes to reach his destination of Hartland by early next week, travelling on as many country roads as possible.
Mr Yates decided to take the rural road run to Devon because not only has it some of the most breathtaking countryside that England has to offer but he knows the area well having lived in the county for almost 20 years.
'The run is being carried out to highlight the importance of rural life, especially as so many communities have been devastated in recent months by foot and mouth disease,' he said.
'The run itself will be under the power of a 1950s tractor which is perhaps one of the most influential machines in agriculture having been responsible for the modernising of farming as we know it today.'
Mr Yates said that as a teenager growing up in Okehampton he often asked his father, who was not keen on motorbikes, if he could have a tractor to go and visit his friends on.
'This is something I have wanted to do for a long time and if it goes well it could become an annual thing,' he said.
'If I raise some sponsorship for the museum that is great but the main aim is to make people more aware of rural issues, which is what the museum is all about.'
The Milton Keynes Museum is very much an oasis of conservation concerned with the gathering and interpretation of artefacts and data from a rural area now hidden by the city.
Mr Yates, who is the brother of Okehampton College's national javelin champion of the 1970s, Peter Yates, operates horse-drawn equipment within the museum site and around the city.