AN ULVERSTON bride to be was given the shock of a lifetime on Sunday when her fiancé took her into the skies above the Furness Peninsula and delivered a rather unusual marriage proposal.

Katie Coward, 33, thought she was just on another flying trip with her (then) boyfriend Dave Conway when she looked down from above to see a message waiting for her.

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Mr Conway, 36, had mowed the words 'Katie Coward will you marry me?' into a field belonging to her parents – with their permission – in Kirkby-in-Furness.

"I was not ready for it – I wasn't expecting it at all – I thought we were just flying," said Ms Conway, an accounts assistant at Barrow-based waste management company Wicks.

"We go fairly regularly and I'd been nagging for us to go again but he'd been setting all this up without me knowing. I can't believe they all kept it so quiet."

The couple, who live at Maple Avenue in Ulverston, had already been together for eight years.

Mr Conway, a digger driver, said he had wanted to propose in such a way that would be a memorable story to share with the couple's future children.

"I wanted it to be something exciting and she hasn't stopped giggling, she absolutely loved it," he said.

"Her dad's a farmer in Kirkby so I had to ask his permission for his daughter's hand and told him what I was planning.

"We flew over and she didn't quite notice at first, she was too preoccupied with her dad's cows in the next field, so I told her to look across and she began to well up. I think she was a bit overwhelmed."

He had taken a ride-on lawn mower from Longlands Caravan Park (LCP) to cut his proposal into the field before hiring an aeroplane from Air Navigation and Trading (ANT) in Blackpool.

He added: "We quite often go flying so she didn't think anything was out of the ordinary.

"She still hadn't said yes for quite a while as we flew around trying to get a photo so I said: 'Well?' and she said yes of course!"

Mr Conway wanted to thank LCP and ANT for their help, as well as Ms Coward's parents for keeping his plan to themselves.