A family's holiday savings went up in smoke when joyriders stole their car and left a burnt out shell as a Bank Holiday crime wave rocked Calne.

The family's nightmare was just one incident in a hectic 72 hours for police, which included two robberies, a spate of burglaries and car thefts in which stolen cars were discovered ablaze.

Father-of-three Michael Stokes, 27, of Dixon Way, said his family had been saving up for months so they could have some spending money when they went for their summer holiday to Cornwall.

But he said he was forced to spend all the cash on a new car to replace the burnt-out wreck of his Vauxhall Cavalier, which was discovered by his neighbour on Bank Holiday Monday.

Mr Stokes had comprehensive insurance on the car, which was worth £250, but he said he would have had to pay the first £100 and would have lost a three-year no claims bonus if he had claimed.

Now Mr Stokes and wife Tracey, 27, have to scrimp and save every penny so they can afford to take Jake, five, Luke, three, and two-year-old Alek on summer holiday. "It was very important to us," said Mr Stokes. "I have three little children who go to Priestley School, which is on the other side of Calne.

"Whoever took the car could see there were three children's seats in the back. My kids lost all their coats as well as toys that were left in the boot. There was practically nothing left. They just took it for a joyride.

"We had to use the spending money for our kids' holiday to pay for a Metro to replace our old family car."

The police are also looking for the culprits of a string of house burglaries, which took place overnight on Bank Holiday Monday.

In Portland Way, an attempted burglary was thwarted, but two Nokia telephones were stolen from a property in North Street when thieves smashed a window to gain access and at a property in Oxford Road a DVD player, stereo system and mini discs worth a total of £1,000 were taken.

In yet another incident which took place in the early hours of Bank Holiday Monday, a gang of thieves attempted to break into a supermarket cash room when they prised a large stone from the wall at Sainsbury's in Calne where the cash machines are embedded.

The thieves used a tool to remove, almost intact, the 2ft by 3ft stone block, which was 1ft deep.

Sainsbury's duty manager Linda Edwards said a small person could have squeezed through the gap, but would have had to break through the room's plasterboard second skin and a filing cabinet. But she added at no point was there any risk of the thieves stealing money from the cash room, as the money is stored in a special time-locked vault.

Just before 1am on Wednesday a woman living in a flat above the One Stop store, in William Street, saw a gang of sledgehammer-wielding thieves rob the shop. The four thieves smashed the doorframe at the back of the store and put their hands through the breach to gain access to the store. Police officers arrived minutes later, but the gang escaped with nearly £500 of tobacco.

Police suspect the three men and one woman in the gang were teenagers or in their early twenties and one offender was caught on the store's internal security cameras.

Nearly four hours later, fire crews were called to Newcroft Road to put out another abandoned car set on fire.

Calne police sergeant Nic Shorten, said: "We suspect most of these crimes may be the work of a small number of persons, who we are actively pursuing."