PILOT Tricia Nelmes has won a prestigious flying competition.

She and fellow competitor Helen Krasner beat other teams battling for the national Dawn to Dusk competition to win the Duke of Edinburgh Trophy.

Tricia Nelmes, 54, a lawyer from Littleworth, is better known as a solicitor for Swindon company Quiney Jaggar.

She and Helen, 53, a researcher from Llangollen in North Wales, became only the second all-female team to win the 38-year-old event.

The Dawn To Dusk challenge involves competitors flying from dawn until dusk and from airfield to airfield, logging their progress and photographing landmarks.

Starting at 4.30am from Gloucester's Staverton airport, where Tricia is a part-time instructor, the pair flew a Cessna 152 for nine hours in a figure of eight over Wales. They finished at 9.30pm.

More than 20 villages, castles and mountainside stones had to be photographed. These included Pembroke Castle, where Henry Tudor was born and the Powys hamlet of Cilmeri where Llywelyn Olaf died and Welsh independence ended.

Tricia said: "We had no idea at all that we were going to win. We couldn't quite believe it when our names were read out."