Mark Weir and Jan Wilkinson

The partner of the Cumbrian businessman who died in a helicopter crash on a Lake District fell revealed today his final words to her were: ‘I love you’.

Mark Weir rang his partner of 27 years Jan Wilkinson before taking off on his ill fated final journey from the Honister Slate Mine he owned.

Ms Wilkinson also spoke of her gratitude to the mountain rescue team members who searched for 45-year-old Mr Weir when she reported him missing. Many of the team members were distraught when they discovered the crashed aircraft, she said.

Jan Wilkinson, speaking publicly for the first time since her partner’s death, said while some may have viewed him as a hard-nosed businessman, privately he was anything but.

“He loved all life and all living things, teaching his children that even spiders had a place in life and deserved to live.

“He hated spiders but he would sit on the floor and take his shirt off and put one on his stomach under a glass to show his children they wouldn’t bite or do any harm, and allay their fears.”

The couple met when Mark was 19 and were together for 27 years. They had three children together.

Mr Weir courted controversy with business plans that included a proposal for a 1.2km zip wire from the side of Fleetwith Pike to the mine below. But Ms Wilkinson said: “I saw him change over the years from being a bull-headed, bring-it-on sort of guy to someone who genuinely wanted to work with people and try to see what good could be brought out of a situation.

“He could be selfish in that he worked so hard but he had a vision that not everyone could see. He was trying to do it for a bigger cause; he was trying to build something different for the county. It all sounds too good to be true, but he was like that.

“What a lot of people didn’t see was that he helped so many people from kids that were poorly to people that had problems with drugs, and friends and relatives that needed jobs doing. He always wanted to do right by everybody and give them his time or help them if they were struggling. Even at work he wanted to make time for people and help them, but it always meant he had more to do at the end of his day.

“He used to get frustrated that he would have an idea that would benefit the county but it would get stalled or blocked. He worked so hard and would wonder ‘why am I doing all this and missing my own family?’

She also said he could be ‘hard to live with, strong-willed and argumentative’, sometimes absent-mindedly driving over her roses as he rushed about in a digger doing jobs.

“If you came to our house there is so much that is broken from taps to even damaged roofing slates but it didn’t matter to me and him. He wasn’t a flashy guy. We didn’t need to live in a mansion. The essence of his life was just having his health, the stability of his family, a nice home and a free conscience.”

Ms Wilkinson said on the night of the accident last Tuesday, he rang to say he would be home soon.

“He phoned me that night and said: ‘I’m just ringing to say I love you’. I said I love you too darling and I’ll see you soon. That was him. The unexpectedness of the phone call was typical Mark,” she said.

He then drove from a job he was working on at a property in Keswick to Honister Slate Mine where he boarded his helicopter.

When he never returned home that night, she rang 999.

Ms Wilkinson said: “The hardest thing I had to do was ring the mountain rescue team yet every member of the team turned out to look for him and I’ll always be grateful to them for that. At the site, they were absolutely distraught.”

Mr Weir had told her how much he was looking forward to spring. His partner said: “He hated winter. He loved flying when the light and the sun were in the sky again. He would fly very high up just to feel the sun on his face.

She explained that Mark’s love of flying dated back to childhood when, at the age of around four, he watched in fascination as a Gazelle helicopter landed in a field at his parents’ farm at High Lodore. The images stayed with him until he could fly his own helicopter. Mark would eventually ‘park’ his in the same field and enjoy an ice cream in the summer.

Ms Wilkinson said: “He didn’t want to fly just any helicopter it was always a Gazelle. He wasn’t striving for a million pound helicopter; it was just a Gazelle. Seeing that Gazelle helicopter as a little boy sparked his imagination in flying.”

She spoke of being touched by the support the family had had since Mr Weir’s accident. “We never realised how many people admired, loved and were touched by Mark,” she said. “The hundreds of cards, phone calls, flowers and emails have amazed us. I would like to think Mark would have been embarrassed by it but I can’t because he would have loved it.”

Mr Weir’s mother Celia Taylor-Weir added: “Mark couldn’t understand why his ideas had to be talked about for months and sometimes years.”

“He used to laugh and get frustrated by officialdom. Sometimes even getting a meeting with all the people required to get something done would take six weeks because of holidays and people’s diaries.

“He had a great foresight for the future of Cumbria and couldn’t understand why some people couldn’t see his ideas or how Cumbria would benefit from them.”

“I saw in his eyes how hurt he could be at the negative attitudes that can exist. One of his visions was to give his workers good, decent what he called ‘southern wages’, to enable them to buy property in their own locality.”

Mr Weir’s funeral will take place on Monday, 21 March at 1pm at St John’s Church, Keswick. Mourners have been asked to wear something orange to commemorate the bright colours of Honister Slate Mine and the businessman’s personality.

He will be buried in a private service at St Andrew’s Church in Borrowdale and a wake will follow at the Lodore Hotel, Borrowdale.

A commemorative event is also being planned for the summer in Borrowdale.