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 main attraction is the guided trip underground: helmets and jackets on, into a mine train, and out along real galleries at around eight degrees, where the guides demonstrate the cutting and loading machinery. Many of them worked here.

Above ground, the enrichment plant and machinery halls hold the industrial exhibition, and the spoil heap beside the site has been turned into a viewpoint and, in winter, a tubing hill.

When to go

• Any season - the underground temperature does not change.
• Winter - the ash hill operates as a snow park, which pairs oddly and well with the mine tour.
• Book ahead - 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.