For anyone who has never read The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings or sat through Peter Jackson's 6 films, this post may not mean much. But Lottie and I, who have done both - several times, were disproportionately excited (for two grown adults) to be going to the actual set where scenes from both trilogies were shot. It was relatively short drive to Hobbiton, but we had left ourselves plenty of time to get there and then added on a bit in case of traffic (that's a joke by the way) and any other possible event that could delay us.
So we arrived nearly 2 hours before the allotted time for our tour. We grabbed something to eat at the Shires's Rest Cafe, read our little guide pamphlet cover to cover and watched all the people milling around.
No - one (with the exception of some Japanese people who were taking literally thousands of photos, of the women in their group, jumping in front of the sign) seemed anything like as excited as we were. No smiley happy faces, just people looking like they were only there because it's on the top 10 things to do in New Zealand. After yet another delicious lunch, we decided to check out the gift shop. Oh dear. Oh no. OH NO!!
This place was going to be a major challenge. As you may have gathered by now, I'm a bit of a fan of touristy gift shops in general - the more tat the better for me - so stick me inside an enormous beautifully laid out shop full of stuff that is all themed around the LOTR and Hobbit and I seriously didn't know where to start. We certainly needn't have worried about arriving at Hobbiton too early - we could have spent literally hours in there.
I managed to escape with just a few small purchases, mostly because Lottie talked me out of buying a Galadriel Evenstar necklace with an eye watering price tag and after depositing them in Bertha, went to the meeting point for our tour. We boarded one of the Green Hobbiton coaches, that ferry fans across the private farm to the set and met our guide.
She admitted right off the bat that she was new to the job, but this was fine by us, as she was just as enthusiastic as we were.
We were apparently, a smallish group - about 18 in total and the first business of the day was to find out who were the big LOTR & Hobbit fans.
"So", she asked, "Who has seen all 3 Lord of the Rings films?"
Our hands shot up, along with about two thirds of the group.
"What about the 3 Hobbit films?" Again, Lottie and I were virtually leaping up and down on the spot, waving our hands in the air. Approximately half the group also raised their hands.
"And who has read the Lord of the rings books?" By this time, the numbers of other raised hands had dwindled, so we were proud to raise ours again.
"And finally, who has read the hobbit?" We were now smugness personified, being (as far as we could tell) the only ones who could answer yes to every question.
“So”, she said, “you super fans should easily be able to identify where we are standing and what scene was shot here”.
Errrrrrrr no! It could have been one of many! Feeling decidedly unsmug and really not wanting to look like a pair of idiots, we both rummaged around in our bags, on the pretext of looking for our cameras and pretended not to hear the question.
An older lady in our group who remarkably had only read the Hobbit and never seen any of the films, guessed correctly - we just nodded as if we had known the answer all along.
It was in fact the scene from The Hobbit, where Bilbo (Martin Freeman) runs down the lane, waving his contract shouting “I’m going on an adventure”.
Our guide suggested we might like to recreate the scene and laughed (she was clearly joking). But Lottie and I - never ones to miss an opportunity, decided to take her up on her offer.
Sadly, as cinematographer, I was totally in the wrong place so my film was of Lottie running away from me with her shouting getting quieter and quieter as she disappeared into the distance.
I think the rest of our group, probably thought we were totally bonkers, but we didn’t care - we were having fun.
The whole place is kept beautifully and they have a full team of gardeners and maintenance people who make sure everything is perfect.
There are Hobbit holes everywhere, each one painted a different colour and with a different theme - except they aren’t holes. In every case bar one, there is just an exterior, with just enough room behind for the set dressers to get in to put up curtains and put things in the windows.
That was a little disappointing, but realistically, as all the interior shots were done on a sound stage in Wellington, it wouldn’t be so authentic, if they built an interior just for the tourists.
We heard lot’s of interesting stories about the filming, the special effects, what went wrong and the enormous trouble they went to to create things that often didn’t make it into the movie - but we’re not allowed to tell you - cos that would spoil things for you when you go - and you should - because it’s fantastic.
Lottie and I loved every minute of it except for when we were taken down to the “Party Field”, from Lord of the Rings.
They have the whole thing laid out as it was in the film and have games to play and things to do, such as stilt walking and hoopla.
Not two minutes after we had arrived, a swarm of Japanese teenagers came running across the field almost knocking our little group out of the way, in an effort to monopolise the “Hobbity” things to do.
Our guide was not amused and went to have a word with their guide, who looked distraught and wrung out like a rag. “I’ve done everything I can to keep them under control” she said, “but when we got to the Party Field, there was no holding them back”.
Our guide wisely decided to abandon the field and get a head start with the last few elements of our tour, so after a pleasant stop at Sam’s House ( Lottie guessed that one correctly - restoring some of our Hobbit credibility with the group) we headed down to the Green Dragon for our free drink.
We were promised costumes to dress up in and there are no prizes for guessing which 2 visitors were first into bonnets and shawls for photos.
Our drink was nice, our guide was lovely and Hobbiton was everything we thought it would be and more.
As we made our way back to Bertha for our drive to Hellie’s house in Taupo, we agreed we wouldn’t have missed it for the world…….
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