MALVERN pensioner Muriel Maby took to the skies over the town for her maiden flight.

The 95-year-old from Lower Wyche successfully bid £150 for the trip over the Malvern hills at a fundraising auction last month.

But she had to endure being driven through flashes of lightning before boarding a 39-year-old Russian Anatov 2 biplane at an airfield near Stratford-upon-Avon.

Muriel said: "It was completely different from what I though it was going to be. I thought it was going to be a small plane but it was changed to a big biplane.

"I was a bit upset that I hadn't got what I thought I was going to have, but everybody was very kind. It was a very steady old thing so I didn't have any stomach troubles.

She added: "One of the people on board was an ex-air stewardess who gave me boiled sweets. It was very, very noisy and I couldn't hear a thing.

"If I had realised my eyes aren't really strong enough now to pick out separate buildings, I would have taken some binoculars."

Wilfred Harper accompanied Miss Maby on the trip from Wellesbourne, which she secured at the auction at Leigh Sinton pub, The Royal Oak.

He said the plane they travelled on was almost as old as Miss Maby in aircraft terms.

"It was a big, lumbering, single-engine biplane of agricultural appearance with the aerodynamics of a combine harvester and about as fast.

"We laboured over Malvern and loitered in the evening gloom about the town and the Hills, then set off back through a rainstorm. I don't think Miss Maby enjoyed the experience, but she was game enough to go through with it."

Despite the unusual nature of Miss Maby's first flight, she said she would fly again but would want to have more say about her mode of transport.

"I rather fancy a helicopter because that can hover," she said.

"But I think perhaps on the whole it did me good because it was different from the usual routine and it didn't put me off flying."