Dedicated newsagents, who have been up the crack of dawn for the past 30 years, are looking forward to celebrating their retirement with a holiday.

Graham and Sheila Allen, who own G and S News in Church Road, Gosfield, are set to shut up shop on January 5.

They took on the shop, which was previously an antiques store, three decades ago after their neighbour decided he would retire.

Since then they have been up every morning at 4.30am to open the shop at 5.30am, with the exception of Sundays when they have a “lie-in” until 6.30am.

In all their time running the shop they have only ever had one holiday, about 15 years ago, when they went to Portugal for a week.

Mrs Allen said: “When you run your own newsagents you can’t close, you have to be there for the newspapers, you can’t just say you’re not going to open.

“You have to be there, it is a service."