A musical mystery surrounded Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis, on Wednesday after a piano was discovered near its 1 347m summit.
The piano was recovered at the weekend by 15 volunteers from the John Muir Trust, a conservation charity that owns the Scottish peak, as they were clearing litter from its summit plateau.
“It’s a 4 000-foot mountain. It’s very steep. It’s rough ground … To get a piano up there is pretty good going,” said Nigel Hawkins, director of the John Muir Trust.
He said it appeared to be an upright piano, with its cast-iron frame and strings intact — but, curiously, without the keyboard.
A public appeal has been launched to find out how the piano went up the mountain, and why. One clue to its origins is a biscuit wrapper with a best-before date of December 1986, found underneath.
About 120 000 people climb Ben Nevis every year, Hawkins said, and at least one is known to have taken a piano with him in the 1980s — but it is understood that he took it back down, too. — AFP