Young Farmers' Tractor Run in memory of their friend has grown to become the biggest in Yorkshire raising thousands of pounds for charity

Knaresborough Young Farmers’ Tractor Run has become so popular it has outgrown its venue and now has a new starting point on the Great Yorkshire Showground.

This year’s run takes place on Sunday, March 8. The event began in 2017, the year Young Farmer Mike Spink died, and it has raised more than £40,000 for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

A member of Knaresborough Young Farmers’ Club, Mr Spink, 24, was killed in a road accident while working on a farm in New Zealand.

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The couple who have never lived more than 200 yards apart and created a Longhorn cattle dynastyJames Parker, one of the tractor run organisers, said Mr Spink’s friends from the Young Farmers’ Club wanted to do something to honour him.

Mr Parker said: “It’s breathtaking to think how this event has grown, we are definitely the biggest tractor run in Yorkshire and probably in the whole of the country.

“Mike would have been absolutely chuffed to bits to see it.”

Mr Parker said the run had always set off from a little car park in Knaresborough but last year the number of tractors filled it and they knew they needed to find a new meeting point.

“It’s wonderful to now have the support of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, which is allowing us to start from one of its car parks,” he said.

A different route is chosen for the run each year but Mr Parker said this year it would still pass through Knaresborough in appreciation of the town’s support over the years.

“Of course, it’s not only the tractors that make this a spectacular event, it’s the spectators, marshals and helpers who all play such a huge part,” he said.

The tractors will set off from the Great Yorkshire Showground at 9am, finishing at Pateley Bridge around noon.