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The brasher team recently spent a day walking with The Phoenix Walking Club (www.phoenixwalkingclub.org.uk) based in North Tyneside and staff from Premier Stockist Great Outdoors Superstore, Shiremoor (www.greatoutdoorssuperstore.com) 

The objective of the day was to gain feedback on our best selling walking boot; Hillmaster GTX and to gain the thoughts and opinions of what consumers look for when purchasing walking boots.

So what better way we thought then to kit 20 people out from the walking club, Great Outdoors and brasher team members with HIllmaster GTX and go for a walk.

The day started at Great Outdoors Shiremoor measuring everyone's feet and ensuring they were in the right sized boot. We then headed off in the minibus to Rothbury car park to start the 7 mile circular walk up and through Simonside woods.

With regular stops to check how the product was performing, seek users thoughts and of course to refuel with lunch which happened to be in the worst location for midges, thankfully, the walking group members were willing to share their midge repellent!

Despite the occasional heavy rain (thankfully we were all in GORE-TEX® boots) the day was a success and brasher gained a great insight into consumer's opinions. Thank you Phoenix Walking Group for coming out for the day with brasher and sharing your thoughts with us.

Here at our headquarters in Sunderland we have our very own resident Eco-Mouse, who is constantly watching over us to ensure we are reducing our environmental impact.

And it has worked! Since 2002, through our recycling initiatives we have reduced our waste to landfill by a massive 54%

This is how we have achieved it...

We now recycle 10 waste streams from our site; paper, magazines, junk mail, cardboard, cans, plastic, printer toners, light tubes, old mobiles and old computer equipment.
We have recycle bins for paper, plastic, cans, batteries & cardboard packaging throughout our office for staff to recycle.
We reuse paper through printers before recycling it, and encourage duplex printing.
We have also removed plastic cups from our cafe vending machine.

All our recycled waste streams are weighed and logged, so we know that in 2008 we recycled over 16 tonnes of waste from our site, (16.705.6KG to be exact.)

brasher headed to Newton-under-Roseberry for their latest outdoor day. We started the day with a brisk walk up to the top of  Roseberry Topping which stands at approx 320 metres and can be seen from most parts of Teeside. The walk to the top only took 20 minutes or so but the views were fantastic.

Then we walked up to the Hanging Stone,  before setting off again to walk to the Captain Cook Monument on Easby Moor.

We were given the task of sketching Roseberry Topping, with a prize for the winning masterpiece. The standards were so high that they were split into two categories. These were 'Under Fives' for the simpler, childlike sketches and 'Artistic impressions' for the more professional artists of the brasher team.

Carol Bunting (above)
Sarah Shanley (below) 

The two winning sketches made it onto our blog however you can see all the others on our flickr page along with some pics from the day.

We ended our day with a meal in the Kings Head which was the perfect end to our day.

Allan Banks, which is just off the A69 between Bardon Mill and Haltwhistle was where Neil and I decided to head to after it was recommended by Zoe - a regular on the brasher blog!

As we are not the most experienced of walkers this route was perfect. This National Trust area offers many miles of woodland alongside the River Allan. Starting at the car park in Allen Banks we headed up through the woods to Plankey Mill, where we stopped off for a bite to eat. The sun was shining and it was a very hot day so we were glad of the goodies we had packed at this point!

We carried on up to Staward Gorge which was the furthest point of our route. From here we decided that we would head back - though not without climbing the extremely (or so it seemed at the time!) steep bank up to Staward Peel, the ruins of a medieval gatehouse. It was well worth the climb as the views are fantastic and the climb down is so much easier.

The route we followed was approx 8-9miles but you can vary the distance as there are shorter routes to follow. If you're ever in this area I would recommend this walk and I'll keep you posted on where we head off to next!

by Sarah Shanley