ON a warm summer Saturday, the last thing you might want to do is to push a piano all the way to the top of the Malvern Hills.

But that did not stop a team of daredevils from doing that very thing with an upright piano weighing some 500 pounds as a fundraising drive for the Worcestershire Breast Unit Haven.

The idea came from staff at Malvern Hills District Council, after a colleague was treated at the unit. They roped in fellow council employees from Wychavon and members of Malvern Male Voice Choir to help with the challenge, and the team assembled on the corner of Church Street and Graham Road to launch the push.

After serenading a curios crowd with tunes on the piano, the team launched the first part of the challenge by pushing it up the steep gradient of Church Street towards the Belle Vue island.

There they paused for the second musical interlude of the day, before resuming the push towards the Wyche Cutting.

The team stopped for two more performances, at the Earnslaw car park and outside the Wyche Inn, before the final push to the summit of the Worcestershire Beacon 1,394 feet above sea level.

Chris Lewis-Farley, the district council's landscaper officer, said: "We wanted to do something to raise money for the unit, and because Malvern has lots of musical connections so we decided on the piano push.

"It was absolutely fantastic. We reached the top successfully, and people were so generous with their donations. We don't yet know exactly how much money we raised, but we even has two people who donated generously so they could play the piano on top of the Beacon.

"Everyone enjoyed it and the piano came out unscathed. It played just as well at the top of the Beacon as it did when we started out."