The BBC's Clarence Mitchell: "He is not alone in wanting to be alone"

Neil Yates, who is married with two children, says it was stress that led him to walk out and start a new life hundreds of miles away.

Lonely pilgrimage to Canterbury

Just like the fictional television character Reggie Perrin, the 37-year-old farm worker had had enough of the rat race.

The pressures of working 10 hours-a-day combined with bringing up a young family caused him to crack.

Last July he set off for a family wedding in Somerset but never arrived.

He started his lonely pilgrimage with a visit to Canterbury Cathedral in Kent and was eventually traced by police seven months later to a hostel on the south coast.

He said: "I just couldn't cope with work pressure and home pressure. I felt I was letting everybody down.

"I wasn't spending enough time at home with my family and I thought I was letting work down if I wasn't at work. So I just decided to go.

A picture of wedded bliss

"It had been building up for a few days. I felt unable to cope with work and just wanted a few days on my own.

"But once I had started I could not stop. It's like telling a little lie and then getting deeper and deeper into trouble with bigger ones just to cover the first one."

His wife Alison says she is just relieved to have him back home again.

Mrs Yates said: "We have just got to look to the future now. We have two fantastic children and our lives will go on and we will have a really good time."

'I want to be alone'

Neal Yates is not alone in wanting to be alone in the modern world.

Around 250,000 people go missing nationally each year with men aged between 26 and 35 particularly vulnerable. However, the majority turn up safely.

Such vanishing acts are either considered selfish or symptomatic of the pressure increasingly faced by many people.

A recent survey found that one in four people claims work is too stressful with British industry losing 90m working days a year because of stress-related illnesses.

Neil Yates and his wife Alison are picking up the pieces of their lives again

According to Cary Cooper, BUPA professor of organisational psychology at University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, it is all too easy for stress to spiral out of control.

He said: "What Neil Yates appears to have been suffering from is what I call 'burn out'.

"This is when all the pressures of life have built up to the point where you just can no longer cope and have to get out.

"Speaking generally, work is becoming more stressful because many organisations are restructuring, delayering or rationalising. Whatever you call it, there are fewer people doing more work.

"And those who are left see people leaving, which makes them feel vulnerable and insecure, so they work longer hours.

"In turn this creates pressures at home as working parents are tired when they get home and find they have less time for their partner and their children.

"I think women are much better at adapting to modern life as they know what they want. It is men who are having the problems."