Thieves stole a safe containing £500 from Vincents Garden Centre at Scarisbrick, Lancs, this week – and made off with it in a wheelchair across fields.

Staff discovered the break-in at opening time on Monday morning.  The raiders had smashed a rear window and tried to carry their booty off in a plastic wheelbarrow. When the barrow buckled under the weight of the safe, they used a wheelchair kept for customer use.

Joint owner Zoë Bell said staff had been able to follow the wheelchair’s tracks through two farm fields, under a 3ft barbed wire fence and across a ditch to where the getaway car is believed to have been parked.

The thieves also took £40 from a till (found smashed in the field) and an Apple iPod Touch.