Flying High
The following is the text of the above article, which appeared in the
Anglesey Daily Post on 16 July 2003.
If ever a girl knows how to get an adrenaline buzz, it’s 24-year-old Juliette Thurston. Not only does she enjoy the excitement and risks of cross-country riding on horseback, but her day job really gets the pulse racing – she’s a Royal Air Force flying instructor teaching the pilots of the future how to handle Hawk jet fighters at stomach-curdling speeds over Anglesey and the mainland.
As you would expect, horses were Juliette’s first love; she first sat on a pony at the age of two in her native Suffolk and did her first small competition at the age of four.
Her rather strange double life came about during a ‘gap year’ in her education when Juliette’s father, a civilian flying instructor, gave her a few lessons over the East Anglian countryside in a Cessna 183 light aircraft.
Juliette was well and truly hooked.
“I wanted to do something for a few years that had a bit of excitement to it,” she said.
