TWO of Colchester's most popular outdoor events have been rescheduled to the autumn so they can still go ahead despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Colchester Medieval Festival and Colchester Food and Drink Festival, which bring thousands of visitors to Castle Park each year, will now both take place in September.

The events normally take place in the summer sunshine, however organisers have moved to reschedule with the peak of the outbreak set to hit the country around May time.

And to say a special thank you to hard working NHS staff across the borough, organisers are offering 100 free family tickets to frontline medical staff - as well as 100 bottles of an aptly named beer.

Don Quinn, who is director of Food and Drink Festivals UK, said: "We have been running our events in Colchester for near on 20 years.

"We soon realised the original dates in June would be overwhelmed by the coronavirus.

"Working with the team in Colchester Council's Amphora Trading we took the decision to move to the only available dates in 2020 for the park.

"The public have been banging on our door for a number of weeks pleading with us to stick by them and produce the events, so, we are.

"We have weathered storms, heavy rain and date changes before and never closed our gates.

"This year it will be intensely difficult and costly to shift two events, but we feel our loyal public deserves us to go the extra mile into an uncertain future."

Colchester Medieval Festival is widely regarded as one of the biggest events of its kind in Europe and the food and drink festival brings the finest traders from north Essex and beyond to the town.

Organisers are promising this year's events will have all the usual festivities and public safety will of course be a priority.

Mr Quinn said: "We have our own security team and first aid provision. In all the years we have been operating we have never had an occasion to call the police and fortunately our safety record has meant all incidents have been dealt with by our onsite medical team."

He added: "As part of our thanks to all our terrific NHS staff we will be giving 100 free family tickets to both of our events to NHS staff - and bottles of Corona beer."

Colchester Medieval Festival will take place on September 5 and 6.

Colchester Food and Drink Festival takes place on September 26 and 27.

Both are in lower Castle Park.

Visit facebook.com/oysterfayre and facebook.com/ColchFoodandDrinkFest.