hello guten tag and welcome to the
industrial heartland of western Germany
where they've spent the last 40 years
digging the biggest man-made hole in
Europe yep
that's right we've come here to see
literally nothing but if there's one
thing I'm good at its making literally
nothing interesting no wait oh for
goodness sake who writes this stuff
[Music]
I'm getting off the train in durin about
halfway between Cologne and the Belgian
border and we're going to catch a bus
from here to Orbitz here the nearest
village to the targa bah humbug or in
English the ham box surface mine a
surface mine is a mine where instead of
digging tunnels underground you start
above-ground and just dig so in many
ways it's very much like a normal mine
except it's on the surface incidentally
this is really cool a tactile map to
help visually impaired people find their
way around the bus station we should
have more of those in the world but with
the possible exception of people who
can't actually see the place it doesn't
feel like during gets a lot of tourists
it's a historic town but it got
flattened during World War two and you
can kind of tell leaving during the bus
speeds through the kind of landscape
that reminds you that we're not that far
from the Dutch border and 20 minutes
later it drops you off in obits here
from here it's about a 50 minute walk to
the edge of the mine you can of course
get there much quicker with a car or a
bike here's what the area looks like on
Google Maps
we're here in orbit Xia this in case you
hadn't guessed is the mine or at least
the hole that's been dug so far this for
those of you who watch my video about
the Becton Alps and are now big fans of
spoil heaps is the biggest spoil heap in
the world and this is the total area
reserved for mining so by 2040 all those
fields at the bottom and any sign of the
two villages that used to be there will
have gone that's why this motorway has
been diverted around the area it used to
run straight through it the old route is
now a ghost Road and sits there awaiting
its eventual fate unless of course the
whole project gets stopped by protesters
apparently you can't even dig a hole the
size of a city these days without a few
angry environmentalists turning up
anyway back to the walk and in a weird
way and bear with me here
this feels a bit like approaching the
Grand Canyon you know it's there you
know it's huge but I don't think we're
going to actually see it until we're
right next to it
definitely getting a bit of a whiff now
whether that's the mind or the
fertilizer is another question it
doesn't smell normal after a little more
walking we cross a main road and find a
sign pointing to the targa bah humbug so
I guess it's just down here this doesn't
feel hugely welcoming so far ah talk
about Humber we've been accident-free
for 83 days is that good is it bad if
it's good does that mean the next
accidents overdue oh there we go there
is a welcome sign that's life in common
with a large space underneath for the
silent you'd better have a good reason
for being here a bit of moisture in the
air better but it doesn't seem to be
raining so that's a that's a concern
there are a lot of fenced off areas here
and in fact part of the reason that it's
such a long walk to get to the mine is
because you just have to go round stuff
this includes a huge railway yard where
freight trains come to load up on
lignite the kind of brown coal that's
being mined here lignite is a poor
quality coal which makes it a very
inefficient fuel and it's also
spectacularly bad for the environment
but demand has shot up since 2011 when
Germany started to shut down its nuclear
power stations under pressure from
environmentalists round of applause
there the walk carries on down what
feels like a normal country lane mostly
this whole area used to be a forest so
if you ignore the fences and the warning
signs for a moment then what you're
looking at here is kind of like the
before photo in a before and after
comparison but if you're watching this
video I'm guessing it's because you
wanted to see the after photo right you
bunch of planet wrecking sociopaths well
luckily there's a little viewing
platform over here
where you can do just that
I mean as holes go it really is holy
from the edge here it's 500 meters down
to the bottom and it's five kilometres
wide on a hazy day like today you can't
even see the other side and of course if
you're gonna dig a hole this big you're
gonna need some seriously big diggers
the excavators here are monsters
straight out of science fiction the
biggest ones are nearly a hundred meters
tall and they're heavier than any other
vehicle on earth I really want to go
down and get a closer look but even if
you don't speak German you can probably
tell that this sign doesn't say hey come
on in so we're gonna need a drone the
only thing with that plan is that it is
hazy today so the views aren't gonna be
the best and also I don't have a drone
luckily though I discovered that some
people on the Internet
do have drones and so with the very kind
permission of two of them here's a
montage and remember kids while this
place does look kind of cool it's
terrible for the environment so please
don't try and make one in your backup
[Music]
thanks very much to rob and to drone
visions for letting me use their
fantastic shots I've linked both of
their channels in the description and
thank you for watching I'd love to grow
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I will see you soon right
who put the words Europe's biggest hole
on a picture of my face