Kohtla Mining Park-Museum

Estonia runs on oil shale - a soft brown rock burned for electricity and processed for oil - and the northeast has been mined for it since the 1910s. The Kohtla mine closed in 2001 and reopened as a museum, with the underground workings left intact and the surface buildings kept as they were.

What you actually see

• The underground tour - helmets and jackets on, into a mine train, and out along real galleries at around eight degrees.
• The machinery demonstrations - cutting and loading equipment run by guides, many of whom worked here.
• The surface halls - the enrichment plant and machinery buildings holding the industrial exhibition.
• The spoil heap - turned into a viewpoint, and in winter a tubing hill.

When to go

Any season, since the underground temperature does not change. Winter adds the ash hill as a snow park, which pairs oddly and well with the mine tour. Book ahead either way: underground tours run to a schedule and in groups.

Honest expectations

You will get cold underground even in summer, and the passages are low, dark and wet in places. Anyone uncomfortable in confined spaces should think twice.

Ida-Viru is a heavily industrial region and the landscape around the museum reflects that - spoil heaps, plants and Soviet-era towns. That is the point rather than a drawback, but it is not scenic.

Nearby

Valaste waterfall and the Ontika klint are twenty minutes north. Alutaguse National Park and Lake Peipus are south.