KENDAL Mountain Festival director Clive Allen and his team are gearing up for this year's event and seriously keen to point out that the world class gathering is not exclusively for climbers and mountaineers with beards and expensive technical jackets.

"While there’s always plenty to keep the climbers and mountaineers happy, behind the scenes we’ve been working hard to widen the festival’s appeal to new audiences, families and young adventurers," explains Clive.

"It’s part of our self-imposed remit to inspire people to explore and enjoy the outdoors.”

Running from Thursday until Sunday, November 16-19, venues hosting this year's towering festival include Kendal Leisure Centre, Kendal Town Hall, Abbot Hall Social Centre and the Brewery Arts Centre.

A true global adventure, regarded as the main social event for outdoor enthusiasts in the UK, KMF's 2017 mighty trek begins with what Clive describes as their own ‘alpine descent’ complete with a marching band, flags and cow bells for children.

“We’re calling on all Kendal families and residents to join us once again for our exciting opening ceremony on the Thursday evening," continues Clive.

"We’ll gather on Greenside, opposite the Rifleman’s Arms, at 5.30pm for our patron Sir Chris Bonington to declare the event open before our torchlit community procession heads down Captain French Lane to the Brewery Arts Centre for an inspirational programme of free films."

Onwards to the festival programme and among its family-focused events, an opportunity for parents and their babies to enjoy high-visual adventure short films together, with a special screening in KMF's private movie truck theatre - a peaceful setting with soft volume and ever-so-slightly brighter lights - on Friday (November 17) from 9am-11am.

There are more family adventure film screenings running at Kendal Leisure Centre on festival Saturday (November 18, 9.30am-11.30am) and Sunday (10.30am-12.30pm), where moviegoers can expect two hours of inspiring and thrilling short films showcasing wild adventure from around the world, with some of the films' stars and special guests on stage to answer questions.

Also at the leisure centre on the Saturday (noon-1.30pm) will be The Art of Survival with Aldo Kane, Megan Hine and award-winning filmmaker Nick Shoolingin-Jordan, who will give a fascinating insight into the world of survival and safety. Megan - who apparently helps to keep Bear Grylls safe - will share stories from her travels alongside the San bushmen in Africa and the Sami reindeer herders in the Arctic to the Iban jungle dwellers in Borneo and many more. While Aldo, a former Royal Marine Commando turned adventurer, will explain his ‘day job’ which sees him working alongside the world’s largest television and film productions as an extreme and hostile location specialist.

The leisure centre will also host 60 minute interactive session for families, exploring how Alfred Wainwright produced his guidebooks and learn how to create your own Wainwright illustrations too. The first session runs from 9.45am-10.45am and at various other slots during Saturday.

Britain’s Abandoned Playgrounds from up-and-coming, Sheffield-based Salt Street Productions, is a series crossing a Red Bull style adventure film and a social history documentary. Starring a freerunner, highliner, BMX rider and skateboarder, it receives its UK premiere on the Saturday at Kendal Leisure Centre (5.30pm-6.30pm).

Another fabulous outing for the family promises to be Secrets of Snow Leopards at the town hall on Saturday (2.30pm-3.30pm) and Sunday (1pm-2pm), featuring behind-the-scenes footage, amazing images and haunting sounds from BBC1’s amazing Planet Earth 2 series. It shows how for three years Justin Anderson led a team of filmmakers into the Indian Himalayas to capture a remarkable insight into the lives of the most mysterious of mountain animals, the snow leopard.

Meanwhile, over at Kendal Leisure Centre on Saturday night (7.15pm-8.45pm) will be another riveting ride - Wild Adventures with Steve Backshall.

Joined on stage by extreme filmmaker Aldo Kane, Steve will be sharing his latest adventure Down the Mighty River - the Baliem River in the island of New Guinea, regaling all with their stories of interactions with the ancient tribes that live along the river's banks, their exploration into unknown caves and just how dangerous the animals lurking in the river and surrounding jungle actually were.

Steve has been passionate about the wild world ever since he could crawl. Growing up, he counted the animals that lived around him as his best pals - from the asthmatic donkey to the grass snakes in the manure heap.

It was a natural progression from his backyard to circumnavigating the globe time and again, from dropping into a vast sinkhole in the Mulu mountains in Borneo, to making the first ascent of Mount Upuigma in Venezuela to entering the Volcano Mount Bosavi, where his team discovered as many as 40 new species, including the largest rat in the world. Steve's hair-raising escapades include almost been swallowed by humpback whales, swept into the guts of a glacier and enduring the stings of hundreds of bullet ants - the world’s most painful stinging invertebrate - in an initiation ceremony: ouch!

Also among the top notch line-up of speakers included in KMF 2017 will be inspirational ultra-endurance cyclist Mark Beaumont with Around the World in 80 Days at the Brewery, on Sunday, November 19 (2pm-3.30pm) and Tommy Caldwell, who catapulted to international fame free-climbing the Dawn Wall on Yosemite’s El Capitan with Kevin Jorgeson, an event that hit the headlines around the world; even Barack Obama was moved to pick up his telephone and tweet the duo. Tommy talks about his dramatic, inspiring memoir at the Brewery on Saturday, November 18 (7.30pm-9pm).

To be frank, it is hard to properly convey the five star quality of KMF events.

As epic as much of the subject matter it portrays, this year KMF has a 'festival within a festival,' the first Kendal Mountain Literature Festival, an absolute must for those with the slightest of literary leanings and interest in adventure and nature.

Packed with more than 20 author talks and discussions covering poetry, fiction, non-fiction, biographies, essays and spoken word, the literature programme includes the prestigious Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature, a tremendous accolade established in 1983 to commemorate the lives of Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker.

To start with, no KMF programme of speakers would be complete without a word or two from the noble knight of mountaineers Sir Chris Bonington, who will talk about his memoir, Ascent, at Kendal Town Hall on Saturday, November 18 (noon-1.30pm).

Other highlights include veteran war correspondent Judith Matloff, investigating why so many conflicts occur at great heights (Brewery, Saturday, 1.30pm-3pm); young nature writers, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett and Polly Atkin, will be in conversation with TS Elliot shortlisted poet, the excellent Helen Mort (Brewery, Saturday, 11.30am-1pm); Fiona Edmonds will explore Mountain-names and Myths in Medieval Cumbria (Saturday, 9.30am-11am, Abbot Hall Social Centre); and Kendal's own award-winning wordsmith, Karen Lloyd, launches her new book The Blackbird Diaries at the Brewery on Friday, November 17 (7pm-8.30pm) and be 'in conversation' with nature writer Jim Crumley. Their roles will be reversed the day after (Saturday, 1.30pm-3pm) at Abbot Hall Social Centre when Jim puts his new book The Nature of Winter in the spotlight during a chat with Karen.

Also featured, popping over from Mexico, will be esteemed travel writer and Panorama journal editor-in-chief Amy Gigi Alexander, leading a panel discussion entitled Imaginary Mountains, with a diverse collection of authors, at the Brewery on festival Saturday (5.30pm-7pm).

Sunday's literary events include Images from a Warming Planet from award-winning environmental photographer Ashley Cooper at Abbot Hall Social Centre (10.30am-noon); also at the centre (4.30pm-6pm) an immersive talk on swimming in the world's lakes, lidos, rivers and oceans by editor and writer Tanya Shadrick, based around Watermarks, the best-selling anthology of new prose and poetry celebrating the life aquatic.

Adding a further vibrant and imaginative strand to the festival is the visual arts. Artspace 26A at The Factory off Kendal's Aynam Road puts art in the festival frame with the Wild Weather exhibition featuring work by two outstanding artists - painter, Joy Grindod and printmaker Jason Hicklin.

David Fulford presents some of his latest oil paintings in The Ice Landscape at the Brewery as part of the contribution to the outdoor genre; and one of the region's soaring creative talents, Stefan Orlowski, shows a stunning mix of plein air painting and studio work in Land Lives at Grasmere's outstanding Heaton Cooper Gallery, arguably, the UK's natural home for landscape art.

KMF artistic director Claire Carter explained that it had been a thrilling few months working with new and known authors and artists who were redefining what 'outdoors' means: "This year we have extended our arts and literature reach beyond the mountain foothills and into the rivers, seascapes and streets of the contemporary outdoor."

For further information and to book festival events telephone the Brewery box office on 01539-725133 of visit www.mountainfest.co.uk.