TWO nurses who were spot on in their search for buried treasure kept a tight grip on the keys to a new £35,000 Mercedes convertible today and said: "Finders keepers!"

Jacqueline Cook, 46, of Higher Walton and her sister Elizabeth Tebbutt, 49, from Brinscall, (both pictured) picked up the car -- one of eight prizes in Texaco's Buried Car Treasure Hunt -- yesterday.

The sisters began collecting clues from their local Texaco petrol station in Hoghton Lane, Higher Walton, in July, and came close to solving two of the puzzles in Scotland and Cheshire before being pipped to the post. They were so determined to succeed that Jacqueline booked a fortnight off work, armed herself with maps and narrowed down the search to Burnsall, North Yorkshire. Jacqueline said: "We spent every spare hour working on it. One of the clues said follow the route of James I, so we got a lot of books out of the library and read up about him -- we learned a lot in the process."

The sisters, who each have three children, solved the final clue, taking their search to a farmer's field in Burnsall. Elizabeth said: "When we got to the field it was empty, so we rang the Texaco hot-line to make sure we were in the right location, but we gave them the wrong site because they said it wasn't there, so we went to the pub for half a lager."

But when the women returned to the field they found six other hopefuls also searching for the hidden hubcap. "We saw another car with maps in the front seat so we ran up this lane back to the field," said Jacqueline. "I never run anywhere, but I ran then!"

After another frantic search, they found the silver hubcap on a steel pole. Buried underneath was a mobile phone and instructions on how to claim their prize.