A gang of mountain bike thieves who stole machines worth more than £20,000 in the Lake District was sentenced to a total of more than 15 years in jail.

The four, from Liverpool, made trips to the national park and cut the locks securing the mountain bikes to parked vehicles.

Three separate spates of thefts of high-performance bikes took place in November and December last year.

Four men were convicted and sent to jail on Thursday.

Tony Jones, 26, and Wayne Brookes, 28, were sent to prison for three years and nine months each; their accomplice Sean Whitehead, 34, received a three-year sentence, and Andrew Whitehead, 41, was jailed for three years nine months, with an additional 15 months for a burglary from 1999.

Detective Constable Duncan Helmn of Cumbria Constabulary said: “The four men travelled to Cumbria from Liverpool in Tony Jones’s white Transit van.

“They targeted stationary vehicles which carried the mountain bikes. The offenders cut the bikes from the vehicles and placed them in the van before quickly taking them back to Liverpool.

“On 1 December police from Kendal and Windermere arrested the men in the white van, just after they had stolen two bikes from Grasmere.

“Cumbria is a very popular location for cyclists and tourists and remains one of the safest places in the country to live and visit.

“These offences were isolated incidents with the suspects from out of the area. They rightly received lengthy custodial sentences for their part in these crimes.”