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I'm standing in Europoort, one of the busiest
ports in the world, near Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

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There are a lot of astonishing infrastructure
projects near here. There's the Delta Works,

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the miles and miles of movable and closable
flood barrier that stops all this land from

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being completetly inundated every time there's
a spring tide.

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But there's a lesser known one, and it's absolutely
astonishing. Because this canal here has a

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problem. Because while this canal might look
huge by British standards, it's really not.

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If you're piloting an enormous, high-sided,
flat-sided container ship and you've got to

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get it through the lifting bit of that bridge
just there, that's a really difficult ask

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at the best of times. There's a really tricky
turn just here, where you've got to get into

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port, as well. That's all really difficult.
And it's made worse by the fact that we're

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in the Netherlands. It is very flat here,
and it is very windy. So what do you do?

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Well, see these things behind me? Yeah.

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They stopped the wind.

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This is the astonishing Rozenburg Wind Wall,
in the Netherlands. It is 25 metres high at

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its peak, it's enormous. And it is a mile
long. And it stops the wind on this entire

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bit of canal.

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Not entirely. Only about 75 percent of it.
Enough that it's the difference between hitting

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that bridge and going straight through it.

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This is an astonishing project. Not just because
of its sheer, almost unimaginable scale -- I

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don't think I can get across on camera what
it's like to stand underneath these things

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-- but this is what you can do when you have
millions of cargo containers, billions of

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euros, going through a port. You can call
up two architects, Strujis and de Wit, and

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say: "We need to stop the wind".

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And we're humans: we'll stop the wind.

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This wind wall is a testament to what humans
can do when we want to. And like a lot of

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the Delta Works, and everything around here,
this is a triumph of humans over nature. And

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it is wonderful.

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