A cafe in a Tynedale town has been explaining how they have adapted to trading during the course of the coronavirus crisis.

Rising Cafe, in Hexham, has seen customers support the organisation during the course of the Covid-19 enforced lockdowns, much to their delight.

The business is run by the Betel charity, who help people return to normal life after battling drug and alcohol addiction.

"As a charity we have a number of different businesses and the cafe is one of them," said Sekou Lenaud from the cafe.

"Through the cafe as people go through their struggles like addiction or homelessness, they get trained to work whether its front of house or in the kitchen.

"Whatever it is and they help people gain skills that they never had before.

"Also we've realised since having the cafe that its not just the people coming through our doors through addiction and homelessness.

"We're finding in the wider community of Hexham people could be going through stuff.

"They come here for a chat. They come here for a coffee and they open up and we kind of share our experiences.

"We find a lot of people get lifted just from hearing our stories."

The cafe, which opened in April 2019, has continued to serve customers during the course of the coronavirus pandemic, with the last 16 months having proven to be difficult for the cafe.

"It hasn't been the easiest period, obviously because of the lockdown," added Sekou.

"The one thing was that there was no need for us to bury our heads in the sand - we just had to go with government guidelines but at the same time do what we had to do.

"As hard as it was, when talking to people - customers when they came in - just to see the smile on peoples faces. That kept us going.

"We just wanted to come back and do the same thing and serve the wider community of Hexham.

"As hard as it was, to us it was a blessing really to see people get something out of it."

As like with other cafe's and restaurants around the region, Rising Cafe had to change how they operated to cope with the changed guidelines as Sekou explained.

"We closed for three days!," he said.

"We did takeaway already but the one thing we added on was delivery.

We had to adjust quickly. It was one of those things where in those three days when we were shut we had to think of ideas quickly.

"We tried deliveries and then it was very slow to start with, but just because something is slow doesn't mean you should give up. It's paid off to be honest.

"100% of the proceeds go straight into the charity to help the men and women who come in from addiction and homelessness.

Everyone who comes into the hotel no one is expected to pay anything.

Rising Cafe is located on Beaumont Street in Hexham.