March 18, 2016

Ben Nevis is the UK’s highest mountain and has just grown a metre taller – but don’t worry, it’s not down to a volcano exploding or an earthquake shifting the earth.

It’s down to technology. Experts at the Ordnance Survey (OS), the country’s mapping agency, recently climbed to the top of the mountain and used the latest GPS equipment to resurvey the mountain.

And the new official height is 1,345m and not 1,344m.

The Scottish mountain was last surveyed in 1949 but without the high-tech equipment involving satellites that has been used in the latest measuring.

Mark Greaves, the OS’s geodetic consultant, was the first person to discover Ben Nevis had grown.

“The new height relates to the highest natural point on the summit and was measured as 1344.527m,” he said.

“I double checked everything and asked others to do so too. What is amazing is how close the surveyors in 1949 were.

“The measured height has changed by centimetres, but those centimetres mean we now need to round up rather than down. So that’s why Ben Nevis will now be officially known as being 1,345m.”