91Èȱ¬

As far as work assignments go - there are good ones, bad ones and ones you count your lucky stars to be sent on.

This weekend I get to go to a country I've never been to before - Finland. However don't expect me to come back with lots of tourist snaps of pretty landscapes because my mission is to go underground.

In fact quite a way underground - some 420 metres below the surface of the earth. It's not quite a hush hush mission, but I can't say too much about it at the moment. Obviously you'll see the end result on Inside Out when we return to your screens in the Autumn.

What I can tell you, is the Finns have been burrowing away at it for eight years or so and they won't be finished for another eight. What they are constructing is something Britain has been struggling with for decades and every single one of our citizens has a vested interest in it.

The joy of being a journalist is that your profession grants you an "access all areas" pass to life. You meet people from all sorts of backgrounds and get to go to places often off-limits to the general public.

And so it is that I'm going down a deep hole. Not that's the deepest I've been to. For a different programe I was lucky enough to go down in North Yorkshire. That is 1,400 metres below the surface, some three times deeper than the one on my current assignment.

At Boulby you are told not to shave that day and you get handed a frozen bottle of water. All becomes clear as you spend what seems like an eternity in the cramped lift. On arrival the heat hits you as if you've stepped off a holiday flight to North Africa.

It's not long before the ice in the bottle starts to melt and you feel the sting of the minerals on your face. If you'd shaved it would be like salt in a wound. Even then you have a six mile drive under the North Sea to the workface.

If you think too hard about all the pressure of the rock above your head you'd get yourself into a panic.

As I type this I'm starting to get nervous about the upcoming trip as the memories of Boulby come flooding back.

However I've seen the plans for the Finnish site and it should be a much less daunting descent into the depths of the planet.

So what's it all about? Well, as I say, I can't reveal too much, but suffice it to say that when all is said and done I and only a handful of others will ever have been down there before it is sealed up again for eternity.