This year's Boots and Beer Walking Festival starts on Friday 12th September until Sunday 14th.

Organised by the Black Sheep Brewery and sponsored by Country Walking Magazine the festival is located in Upper Wensleydale. There will 14 walks over the weekend starting from Hawes, Aysgarth and Askrigg, with a free shuttle bus linking the three points. The tickets for the walking festival are priced at £20 which includes a goody bag, Boots and Beer T-shirt and a Walkers Tally Card.

The walks are writen by Mark Reid who presents a monthly television series of walks for Yorkshire Televisiion and is author of The Inn Way walking books.

There are a lot of other activities taking place throughout the weekend, tickets are limited but you can find full details on the website by following the link below.

www.blacksheepbrewery.com/Events/EventDetail.aspx

Andy Roddie from the well informed 'Freeman of the Hill' blog, is a fan of our boots, and has said some nice things about us in recent months.

A Hillmaster wearer for some time, he recently commented on our blog saying that our boots were brilliant for general walking, but not so suitable for steeper winter climbing.

Well good news Alex, we actually do have a Mountain range of boots. (Incidentally, we also have an in-house 'Mountain Man' too here at brasher, climbing fanatic Philippe Galland.)

It's a range of high performance fabric boots suitable for all year round, alpine walking and ambitious trekking over the roughest terrain.

It comprises:

The Aso GTX is our stiffest mountain trekking boot ideal for all year round usage.

With its Vibram® "Ice New" C1/C2 crampon compatibility, moulded toe box and Tri-Fit™ Mountain technology characteristics we think it's ideal for winter walking above the snowline.

We've also got the Telica GTX which is a mountain trekking boot ideal for alpine walking and ambitious trekking on rock and scree.

And not forgetting for the lay-dees, the Tambora GTX.

A women's specific trekking boot ideal for extended treks carrying heavy loads below the snowline.

So hope we've put the record straight Andy, and indeed given you something to fill the gap in your climbing footwear arsenal.

Photo credit: Mister Moo. More of his Flickr stream here.

Concerns about the credit crunch and worries about a potential economic downturn escalate, consumers are looking for ways of cutting holiday costs, rather than cancelling plans altogether.

With this in mind, bookings with the Camping and Caravanning Club are already up 10 per cent on last year, with many of its 4,000 campsites already nearing capacity for the summer.

'We're seeing a strong increase in interest, with more people looking for good-value holidays, particularly families and the younger market,' said spokeswoman Ruth Walmsley.

At brasher we've always considered campers to be key audience for our products, so over the next few months watch out for more posts on what's going on, and where, in the camping scene.

To kick things off, here are 10 of the best places to camp near a beach, in the opinion of the Travel Guardian.

We're not sure if we should let the boys and girls in our design department see the photograph above.

It might give them ideas. Like a bike shod with brashers?

The imaginative brainchild of Max Knight Design, we take out hat, and boots off to you. Maybe we should collaborate with him for an offroad version?

See more of Max's work here.

We spotted a very gratifying post recently on the blog of our friends at Country Innovation. Edited highlights above.