COMMUNITIES across the region will ensure they honour the fallen this Remembrance Sunday despite the challenges of Covid restrictions.

Due to the ongoing pandemic and lockdown, many traditional services, parades and wreath-laying ceremonies have been cancelled.

Those that are going ahead have been scaled back to short, outdoor or online events to adhere to guidelines issued by the Government and Royal British Legion.

One of the North-East’s biggest Remembrance events, The Soldiers’ Charity’s annual Festival of Remembrance at Durham Cathedral will go ahead in a virtual manner.

Recorded in a carefully sequenced evening of filming at the cathedral on Wednesday, the festival will feature the Band of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and the Pipes and Drums 102 Battalion REME and be narrated by Colonel Alasdair Hutton from the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

It will be shown on the charity’s social media channels on Saturday night, at 7.30pm.

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The cathedral will then mark Remembrance Sunday with a live-streamed service at 10.15am and on Armistice day, November 11, there will be live-streamed prayers and two-minute silence at 11am.

Many other churches across the region are also holding online services.

Durham County Council will run a series of events to honour those killed in conflict, including lighting up six landmarks red and projecting the war poem For The Fallen onto the wall of Clayport Library.

Councillor Joy Allen, the council’s Cabinet member for transformation, culture and tourism, said: “We appreciate that for many Remembrance Sunday is such an important date and one that deserves to be marked with respect and reflection. To support this occasion, we feel the new programme of lighting up landmarks and virtual events is something for us all to be proud of and commemorates Remembrance Sunday with the due dignity it deserves.”

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Other virtual events include a ceremony at Redcar Cenotaph, to be live-streamed on Facebook at 11am on Sunday.

Mayor of Redcar and Cleveland, Councillor Carole Morgan, said: “This is a supremely important event and it must go ahead but it is with a heavy heart that we ask people to stay away this year.

“A lot of elderly people usually attend and we want everyone to stay safe and well and stay away this time. Please take a moment to reflect or watch our livestreamed service and leave messages there.”

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One event for people in North Yorkshire is a ‘heroes’ themed online service of Remembrance today involving children, Armed Service representatives, civic leaders and veterans which replaces the popular annual Service to Remember at Ripon Cathedral.

North Yorkshire County Council’s service children’s champion Jess Greenhalgh said: “We are taking advantage of this unusual situation and inviting as many people as possible to join us for our Service to Remember.

“All schools in North Yorkshire are invited to view the service on Friday, November 8, the day we would have all been in the cathedral together.”

The service can be viewed at servicepupilschampion.co.uk/Remembrance/

Along with the revised official events, many communities have created tributes to their war fallen, from a poppy display at Bishop Auckland Town Hall to soldier silhouettes and knitted poppies on West Auckland village green.

  • On Saturday, The Northern Echo publishes a special remembrance edition of its Memories supplement, with amazing war stories and also looking at how over the last 100 years, war memorials have sprung up in nearly all of our communities.