Lake District hill Miller Moss reclassified as a mountain

John Barnard, from Mold, Jim Bloomer, from Cumbria, and Graham Jackson, from Chester, measured the height of Miller Moss on 1 August

A peak in the Lake District has been upgraded to mountain status after being found to be higher than originally thought.

Miller Moss had been recorded at 609m (1,998ft) - 1m (3ft) too short to be classified as a mountain.

Surveyors Graham Jackson, 68, and John Barnard, 69, have now measured it at 610.1m, 3ft over the 2,000ft threshold.

Ordnance Survey (OS) said it would now be updating maps to show the new height.

The reclassification takes the number of mountains in England and Wales to 446, as classified by John and Ann Nuttall in the officially recognised The Mountains of England and Wales.

Mr Barnard said the "result was fantastic, it was a promotion so that makes us quite pleased".

The former work colleagues have been surveying mountains for about 12 years and took about eight hours to establish Miller Moss's height.

All the equipment needed weighs 12kg

Working with fellow mountaineer Jim Bloomer, they used Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) kit, checked against OS base station data.

This is more accurate than the photogrammetry used to take the original reading, which has a margin of error of +/- 3m.

"So you look at the map and you look at anything around 609 and think, well, that's worth looking at," Mr Barnard said.

• Peak declared mountain after survey

• Survey turns hill into a mountain

Miller Moss had been on the "intray for a long time" as they suspected it could easily be promoted to mountain status, he said.

The equipment used in the work weighed 12kg, which is "quite a lot of kit to carry up", Mr Barnard said.

As it costs between £15,000 and £20,000, "you don't want to lose it in a gale", he added.

Mr Barnard said he did not believe there were many hills left that they had not checked.

"But, as we're getting old it fits nicely," he said.