While teenage boys in much of England are focused on computer games, just as previous generations built Lego models or collected stamps, in Wootton Fitzpaine they are more likely to be collecting and rebuilding vintage tractors. Three such lads, all in their early twenties and now full-time tractor mechanics, have decided to raise money for a youth-focused mental health charity by driving their tractors from John O’Groats to Lands End this September, documenting their journey on TikTok.
Billy Kitcher explains the genesis of his idea. For the past few years he has joined a vintage tractor rally near Milborne Port in support of the Charity WillDoes (WillDoes.co.uk), which Lesley Paddy set up to commemorate her son, who died in tragic circumstances in 2019. The Charity’s aims inspired him because, as he told the BBC, he and some of his friends had struggled with their mental health, ‘There’s not enough help for farmers; they’re overworked and overthink things.’
His idea for the North-South marathon drive came to him one morning this Spring, ‘I woke up and thought, Let’s do it.’ He recruited two friends, Jack Macey and Bill Parsons to make the trip with him. Mrs Paddy secured the support of Peter Andrews of Andrew’s Plant and Construction Services in Wareham, who agreed to transport the three tractors to the north of Scotland, and retrieve them from Lands End.
Their employers, too, have been supportive; all three work for local agricultural engineering firms: Billy Kitcher for M.J.Fry near Dorchester; Bill Parsons for Francis Bugler in Beaminster; and Jack Macey for Graham Holland near Yeovil. They are each taking two weeks off to make the trip. One attraction of vintage tractors to teenagers is that you can have wheels on the road soon after your sixteenth birthday, rather than waiting to take a driving test when you are seventeen. In fact, I remember both Billy and Jack commuting to work on their tractors from Wootton.
None of the tractors they are driving will have cabs, but they all have link boxes for warm and waterproof clothing, camping gear, tools and probably essential spare parts. They reckon to average 18 miles an hour, and hope to complete the trip in under ten days. Billy will be on the oldest tractor, a 1954 Fordson Major; Jack will ride a 1963 Nuffield 10/60, after a complete rebuild of its engine. When I spoke to them in Jack’s workshop, deep in the Charmouth Forest, they were awaiting a refurbished cylinder head; Bill’s Ford 67/10 is only 40 years old.
They had plenty to choose from, owning between them 18 tractors of all shapes, sizes and ages. This is a serious hobby in West Dorset. It’s been hard to find time to talk to Billy. A recent text message read, ‘I’ll have to get back to you; I have a meeting today and radio tomorrow, and still trying to work; it’s chaos to be honest’. The pressure level rose sharply, shortly after I left their workshop at around 2130 on hearing that the original cylinder head was cracked and unusable. By midday the following day, Jack’s grandfather, Nick Fowler, a former National hedgelaying champion and himself a tractor enthusiast, had sourced a replacement cylinder from a 90-year-old “Nuffield fanatic” in Offwell near Honiton. Phew!
Mrs Paddy is trying to find support for the three lads on their way South, down the A9 in Scotland, across to the Lake District and down the West side of England. I asked if the NFU had been supportive, thinking it should be, given that a recent survey by the Farm Safety Foundation found that 94% of UK farmers under the age of 40 rated poor mental health as one of the biggest problems facing farmers and their families.
If readers of Marshwood Vale want to support this heroic adventure, funds are being raised on: https://www.justgiving.com/page/bill-kitcher-1?utm_-source=EM
They leave John O’Groats on 8 September and I hope they raise a lot of money for WillDoes. I mentioned to Jack that the BBC piece that originally alerted me to their project said that he’d never left Dorset. ‘That’s nonsense,’ he said, ‘I work in Somerset’. That said, the families of all three lads are deeply rooted in the agricultural community of this corner of Dorset and are a great credit to their generation.
