West Cumbria’s first escape room has opened its doors.

Lakes Escapes, on Peart Road, Workington, offers a Baker Street themed escape room where teams of up to six people have up to 60 minutes to solve puzzles and find clues to unlock the room.

Carol Watson, who opened the attraction with husband John, said: “We’ve done a few escape rooms ourselves as a family and really enjoyed it.

“There isn’t much to do in this area, the nearest escape rooms are currently in Ulverston or Barrow so we thought we’d open one here in Workington.”

Live escape rooms are inspired by 1980s point-and-click adventure video games and started to become popular around 10 years ago.

These are set in fictional locations, such as prison cells, dungeons and space stations and players become part of the plot.

Clues are hidden within the room and a game master directs the experience.

Escape rooms are also becoming increasingly popular as team-building exercises.

Carol, who lives in Workington, said the attraction is suitable for people of all ages.

She said: “In the Baker Street room the mystery is around a detective and a notorious gang. The gang meet up and someone is killed.

“You have to find out who the murderer is in 60 minutes.”

Live escape rooms were first introduced in Japan when Real Escape Game was developed by 35-year-old Takao Kato in 2007.

The company holds temporary events featuring different themes of escape rooms.

The trend started to spread across Asia, Europe and the United States where permanent-base escape rooms were created.