ESSEX gangsters tried to smuggle enough cannabis into Britain to make joints stretching from John O' Groats to Land's End.

Two shipments of resin worth £11 million – hidden inside boxes of cucumbers – weighed around four tonnes.
If made into joints and laid end to end, they would stretch more than 900 miles.The 12-strong gang were foiled by the Serious Organised Crime Agency, who tracked the shipments from Spain in a covert sting operation last summer.The gangsters were jailed for a total of 66 years at Basildon Crown Court on Thursday.Investigators mounted surveillance operations at the mob's drop-off points – a depot in Orsett and an industrial site in nearby Dagenham.The first wave of arrests were made as the gang tried to process nearly two tonnes of cannabis at the Orsett site, on June 27, last year.Driver Gary Burns, of Roding Hall Cottages, High Roding, was caught with a tonne of drugs in his vehicle, while fellow gang member Stephen Ely, of Southall, was tackled on a central reservation as he tried to flee.Just a fortnight later on July 12, ringleader Paul Gurr tried to import another two tonnes, but his gang were caught unloading from a lorry in Hounslow, west London.Gurr was arrested in a Brentwood restaurant later that day.Judge Alan Saggerson, sitting at Basildon Crown Court, described it as a "sophisticated operation" offering "significant financial rewards" for the gang.He told the defendants: "All of you played your parts in this attempt to import a huge amount of cannabis into the country."And that means that you will all receive a significant prison sentence."The racket's mastermind Gurr, 44, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess a Class B drug with intent to supply, and was jailed for seven and a half years.The gang's muscle, a 7ft, 30st giant called Robert Holden, of Canvey Island, got six and a half years for the same offence.Burns, 36, the driver from High Roding, was given five and a half years after being found guilty of possession of a Class B drug with intent to supply.The industrial unit in Orsett was controlled by John Chalkley, 53, of Nine Ashes Road, Ingatestone, who got six years and three months.Gang member David Freeman, 55, of Knights Way, Brentwood, was given four and a half years in jail for attempting to possess Class B drugs with intent to supply.The other seven gangsters, mainly from Essex and East London, got 36 years between them.