BOUQUETS and tributes have been laid outside a school following the death of a graphics teacher from Bude in a crash on the A39.
Sara Bluett, 46, who was deputy head of the design and technology department at The Park Community School in Barnstaple, was killed near Kilkhampton on Friday as she drove to work.
Miss Bluett's Volkswagen Polo collided with a Ford Maverick pick-up truck towing a cattle trailer.
The alarm was raised at 7.15am and emergency personnel were dispatched. As well as police, they included three ambulance crews, three fire crews, two from Bude and one from Launceston, and a doctor. Paramedics fought to save Miss Bluett but the former Budehaven School pupil was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Maverick, which had gas bottles in the back, crashed into a ditch and ended up on its side. The driver, a man from Northam in his early forties, was cut free and taken to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth by the Cornwall Air Ambulance.
He is in a stable condition in hospital with serious leg injuries. Another man in the vehicle was not badly hurt.
Miss Bluett lived at Widemouth Bay, where her family are farmers.
Paul Tilzey, one of her former teachers at Budehaven, called her death a great loss and said he remembered her "as a lovely girl with a warm and bubbly personality who always wore a smile.
"She was a delightful pupil and would have gone on to make a wonderful and warm-hearted teacher."
Miss Bluett completed a teaching degree at Middlesex University in 1990 and later obtained a master's degree in design and technology education from Sheffield Hallam University.
Before joining the design and technology department at The Park School she had worked in London for ten years, and had also spent a year teaching in Australia.
It is believed she once taught Radio 1 DJ Reggie Yates, and today several pupils were tweeting the presenter to tell him of her death.
In 2005 Miss Bluett spent a half-term week exchanging experiences with teachers in Uganda with the charity Education Action.
She was one of nine teachers from across the UK visiting schools and projects in Bugiri, one of the poorest districts in the country.
They spent time observing lessons and also witnessed family learning in the home, and had a chance to spend a night with a family in a traditional village setting to get a real taste of rural life in Uganda
Sara raised more than £6,000 through events in her home town, including a Bob Marley Night, a Sixties and Seventies night and a knockout skittles tournament.
She also involved pupils at The Park School in fundraising, who took part in sponsored silences and walks.
Five years ago she and her partner David Watton won a quad bike for their work in converting farm barns at Widemouth in a competition run by the Western Morning News.
