RAIDERS who staged a gunpoint raid on the isolated home of a brave Northumberland farmer were today beginning jail sentences totalling 27 years.

Abie Stewart and John Naisbitt struck at Adam Pringle’s property after making an internet search for remote rural targets.

They loaded likely locations into a satnav then drove to the Northumberland countryside armed with a gas-powered pistol, makeshift handcuffs and Balaclava masks.

Mr Pringle woke in his bed in the dead of night to find valium-addict Stewart pointing the gun in his face.

But the 53-year-old farmer decided to fight back, prosecutor Jolyon Perks told Newcastle Crown Court.

Mr Pringle feigned unconsciousness after Stewart pistol-whipped him a dozen times, an attack that left him bleeding heavily and was so ferocious the weapon broke apart.

But as the raiders fled with a haul of shotguns, Mr Pringle gave chase in his car and rammed Stewart – fleeing in the farmer’s own Toyota Landcruiser – off the road.

His courage was commended by judge Guy Whitburn as he gave Stewart a 15-year sentence and jailed Naisbitt for 12 years.

Judge Whitburn said: “Clearly not a man to take things lying down, he acted with admirable courage confronted as he was by a man carrying what could have been a deadly firearm.

“He pursued the man, effectively stopped him and was then driven at by him.

“He behaved very bravely. He is an example to us all and suffice to say, I commend him for what he did.”

Stewart, 30, of Thorndale Road, Scotswood, Newcastle, and Naisbitt, 35, of Devon Street, Houghton-le- Spring, each admitted aggravated burglary in the early hours of March 5 this year.

Naisbitt pleaded on the agreed basis he had stayed outside Mr Pringle’s farmhouse in Denwick during the raid.

Stewart, who drove the Landcruiser at the victim after the country road collision, managed to escape.

He later abandoned the 4x4 near Alnwick and was arrested later the same morning in Lesbury after reports of a suspicious man in the area, Mr Perks told the court.