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August 2005: An adventurous centenarian celebrated her 100th birthday with a flight with a record-breaking pilot.
Oxford Airport-based Polly Vacher, the first woman to fly solo in Antarctica, took retired district nurse Mary Robinson for a spin in her record-breaking Piper Dakota.
They met when Polly gave a talk at Shiplake Women's Institute about her exploits flying around the globe.
"Mary asked one of the most interesting questions," Polly said. "When I learnt she was 99, I promised to give her a flight when she reached 100."
When asked if she had done anything special with her life, Mrs Robinson thought for a while and said "I suppose delivering about a thousand babies is quite special."
Oxford’s Polly Vacher has set three world records including - first woman to fly solo in a single engine aircraft over the North Pole, the first woman to fly solo in a single engine aircraft in Antarctica, and the first person to fly around the world in a single engine aircraft landing on all seven continents.
In 1971, Oxford’s CSE Aviation supplied and equipped Sheila Scott’s Piper Aztec in which she became the first pilot to fly solo over the north pole in a light aircraft having flown round the world three times, having broken over 100 records.
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