FAYE Pursglove, a leisure centre manager from Calne, was part of the best performing all-female team in a military competition earlier this month.

The RAF reserve corporal was competing in the Altcar Challenge, a competition testing the military skills of 192 reservists, and her team came away with the Brig Sneyd Trophy.

The challenge saw contestants take on fire fighting, battlefield first aid, training in combating IEDs, pistol shooting, manning vehicle checkpoints and a gruelling assault course among other tests.

There was also had to march up to 1.5km at speed between the challenges.

All three services were represented with servicemen and women from six other NATO countries making up the 45 teams taking part.

The leisure centre manager said the battlefield run, where her team ran with a stretcher loaded with sandbags over dunes was one of the toughest parts of the weekend.

She said: "It was across 500 metres of hills where the tracks were soft sand, it was really hard."

“It was a very proud moment to win the trophy for the 'Movers' and that the trophy will take pride of place in the 4624 Squadron bar.

"When I go back to work on a Monday, I know that while most people have been watching The Voice, I've been doing something really exciting like shooting, learning to detect IEDS or doing assault courses. That gives me a real buzz.”

The 29-year-old, based at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire with Number 4624 Movements Squadron, joined the RAF Reserves in May 2005, and was promoted to Corporal in December 2014.

She has served two tours of duty in Afghanistan as a reservist in Kandahar in 2010 and at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province in 2014.

For more information on life as an RAF reservist click here.