PARAPLEGIC microlight pilot Dave Sykes has reached Bali in his continuing attempt at a record-breaking flight from York to Sydney.

Dave, a member of York Flying Club at Rufforth Airfield, left Kuala Lumpur last Thursday after lengthy delays and then flew short distances daily to finally land in Bali early yesterday.

Club member Mike Poole said Dave had indicated that conditions were very turbulent, and so his flights were necessarily shorter than some of the marathon legs he had done earlier.

Dave, 43, from the Dewsbury area, who lost the use of his legs after a motorcycle accident in 1993, took off from Rufforth on April 28 on a bid to fly more than 11,600 miles to Sydney to raise money for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

He said in a blog that TV crews and newspaper journalists were continuing to cover his journey and told how, while flying at 1,000ft, he saw houses built on stilts above the floods, amazing sights, and small villages without roads where everyone had a boat to get about on waterways.

He said he had flown through more “dreaded storms”, which led to him being “bounced all over, holding on to the bar for dear life again, and dodging the huge clouds that were starting to cover the countryside.”