MARKET stall holder Dave Cammack has literally been giving away his stock!

Bewildered customers were handed £40 boots and shoes for free after they were asked how much they wanted to pay.

Mr Cammack, who runs Salamander at the bottom of Skipton High Street, said he had pre-ordered a lot of shoes and boots ready for the agricultural show season but when foot and mouth struck the area, he was left with a stockpile of footwear.

He was asked to move the shoes out of the storage barn as it was on a farm, and thought he would get rid of the majority of them in a couple of days if he sold them off cheap.

The £30 to £40 boots and shoes were reduced to £5 and put out for sale. But weeks later Mr Cammack was amazed that they had not been sold.

He said: "We should have had queues but people seemed to be missing the point. We were so bemused last Wednesday - the weather was right, there were lots of people and we were in a good mood - that when one lady asked how much they were I asked her how much she wanted to pay."

She took them for nothing.

Mr Cammack gave away about 15 free pairs throughout the day. "It was a shock effect. Even after they had walked across the road they would look back totally perplexed. About three or four people came back and said they could not take them and paid the £5 anyway."

He said he was amazed that people would not take the reduced stock seriously. Often customers would prefer to buy the same boots from a shop rather than buy them on the market stall.

For a trial one hour, he offered two pairs for £5 but sold less in that time than he did when they were double the price.