GERMAN guests are coming to Sedgefield as part of a friendship link.

Sedgefield Twinning Association has invited 23 people from Hamminkeln, in the north Rhine region of Germany, for a week next month.

Association chairman Dr Joyce Jordan said: "It is particularly poignant to have good friends from Germany visiting in this year celebrating the 60th anniversary of the end of the war and the beginning of peace."

The link between the two areas has been established for a number of years and there will be a welcome for both regular visitors and newcomers.

The Burgermeister of Hamminkeln Herr Holger Schlierf will be among the party and will visit the site of Featherstone Park PoW camp, in Northumberland, where his father spent three years before repatriation.

Dr Jordan and friends investigated the various sites of PoW camps in Durham and Northumberland to establish where the Burgermeister's father had been held.

The German visitors will stay with families in the Sedgefield area and have a number of events planned, including a visit to Locomotion: National Railway Museum, a civic reception at the town hall in Durham and a trip to the water gardens at Alnwick Castle.

The visitors arrive on Friday, May 27.