Tunnelling machine is digging underneath ancient woodland as the HS2 rail project goes ahead

Fascinating footage shows a huge tunnelling machine called Dorothy digging underneath ancient woodland as the HS2 rail project goes full-speed ahead.

Dorothy, the 125-metre-long boring machine weighing 2,000 tons, is drilling under the countryside in Europe's biggest ever infrastructure project.

Ten borers - named after Britain's most celebrated scientists and engineers - will dig 64 miles of tunnel for the project, linking London to the Midlands.

Dorothy is named after Dorothy Hodgkin, who in 1964 became the first British woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The huge Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) completed its one-mile dig under Long Itchington Wood in Warwickshire.

It started its journey at the tunnel’s North Portal last December and footage shows the moment it broke through the wall of the reception box at the South Portal last Friday (22/7).

The tunnelling team have been working around the clock in shifts for seven months to operate the TBM, which has put 790 concrete rings in place to support the structure.

This video was filmed on the 26th of July 2022.