CHARITY event organisers have protested after posters promoting their sausage and beer festival were ripped down and replaced with posters for an event being staged 38 miles away.

About 15 butchers and several local breweries are helping to stage the festival at the Camp Hill Estate, at Kirklington, near Bedale to raise £2,000 for an outdoor defibrillator.

But one of the organisers, Jo Ropner, said they were astonished when posters put up on the A6055 next to the A1 motorway near Bedale were torn down and replaced by signs for Pickering Steam Rally.

She said: “What was worse was whoever did it just threw our posters in the ditch. Anyway we retrieved our posters, we’ve also had some new even brighter ones done.

“We rang the organisers of the Pickering Rally, who didn’t seem to know who would do such a thing. Theirs is a very big event, but now we’re asking people to keep an eye on the new posters to make sure they don’t get ripped down again."

The family event is being held on July 26 from noon. Local butchers will be competing for the best sausage accolade, with Mark Cockburn of Cockburn’s butchers in Bedale and Andrew Keeble of Heck Sausages fighting it out to see who is the fastest sausage maker.

The aim is to have the defibrillator at Camp Hill, but it will be available for wider use, Mrs Ropner said they’re also hoping North Yorkshire police will include it on a map of the location of all outside defibrillators in the county.

Camp Hill, the corporate event centre, will also have face painting, old fashioned sweets and vintage cream teas, bouncy castles and activities, including quad biking, segways and the Aeriel Extreme high wire course, camping pitches are also available. No one was available to comment from the Pickering Traction Rally.