Seventy metres down, in deep incognito beneath a disguised ventilation shaft in the Chilterns countryside, lies HS2’s buried treasure: two 10-mile tunnels, built to avoid an area of outstanding natural beauty, eerily spectacular in gleaming concrete.
They are, laments a staffer on the high-speed railway scheme, what all of the route should look like by now: pristine, fully constructed, and just waiting for a railway to run through them.
