INSTEAD of a week in the sun, Gloucestershire archivist Karen Cooke is taking time off for an international mission to save more than 1,000 years of history.

The Cologne City Archive building in Germany collapsed in March and buried more than 1,000 year's of historic documents in the rubble.

Karen, who works for Gloucestershire Archives, is spending her holiday time to help the salvage effort.

She said: "Archives are the collective memory of a community. The Cologne archive is one of the oldest and most important in Northern Europe."

Cllr Antonia Noble, Gloucestershire County Council's cabinet member with responsibility for archives, said: “It’s great to think that someone from Gloucestershire will be involved in an international effort to rescue treasures that have been collected for more than a millennium."