Today we visited Hobbiton and it was very fun. Ems and I were like small children and we learnt a lot about ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy.
Today we begun by checking out of the Nomads: Fat Camel and picking up our rental beast! I booked a ‘Road-Trip Special’, which means that we get an older car with more kilometers on it that’s got a few dents. It’s amazing; we have received an estate Mazda Familia, which is lovely.
Randomly this morning I received a phone call from a gentleman who explained that the booking online that I had made last night (for a campsite in Taupo) hadn’t fully gone through and that I needed to give him my details so that he could process the payment and reserve the room. At first I was like, ‘okay’, but then after a few seconds I thought ‘hang on a sec, this man knows my name, my phone number and that I made a booking at the campsite and he wants me to give him my credit card number. Something here isn’t right’.
After I told him that I’d ring him back in a second he got a little shirty and said that if I didn’t complete the payment then my room wouldn’t be confirmed and reserved. I told him I’d ring back in five minutes and hung up. At this point I explained to Ems what had been said and she had the same reservations as me. So I phoned the campsite to check that my reservation was all good. I spoke to a lovely lady who very helpfully explained that the campsite used a third party to process payments but that as far as she was concerned the money had come through and everything was fine. She told me that she would just ring and check about the payment and after a few minutes phone back and said that everything their end was also fine. At this point she told me that I need to ring the police and explain that I had been hacked etc.
After all of this I felt a little shaken to be honest, but I knew that phoning the Police would be the right thing to do. After explaining everything to the police I was told to go to a website to log my concern and also to let the campsite know that they should do the same thing.
Scary stuff. Imagine if I had given him my bank details!
So, back to the fun day that we have had: upon picking up the hire car we promptly got lost on Auckland’s road system but after a few times turning around we were off to Matamata to see us some Hobbits!
It only took two hours to get from Auckland to Matamata and we found the campsite really quickly. The ‘Standard Cabin’ that we booked has three sets of bunk beds (to sleep six people) and lots of cutlery and kitchen things, so we’re good to go for food and sleep. There are even some hot pools! We plan to try them out at some point while we are here.
After dumping our bags and having a little tidy we set of for Hobbiton. It was reasonably easy to find, we only had a few issues with the lack of signage, and were soon buying our tickets and waiting for the bus.
Our bus was ‘Gandalf the White’, so called because it was white. We were driven up through the rolling hills of Hinuera and through the farmland of the Alexander family. In 1998, whilst location scouts were doing their thing, the 1250 acre sheep and beef farm was discovered and found to be the best place to film the Hobbit district of ‘The Shire’. The farmer was asked if he would allow filming to commence on his land and is famously recorded as saying ‘Lord of the what?’ when told about the filming of Lord of the Rings.
After lots of discussions regarding the contracts and money, they came to an agreement and pretty soon the farm had been transformed into ‘The Shire’.
Forty-four Hobbit Holes were created and things such as the huge Oak tree that overlooks Bag End were brought in to paint the picture of a rustic sort of living. A lot of the trees had all their leaves stripped and other leaves wired onto them! The orchard section of The Shire was originally grown with apple trees, however in the books the orchard has plum trees. Sir Peter Jackson wanted the overall look of the apple trees so used these but had a special team who came in and stripped the trees of all apples and replaced them with plums that were wired onto the trees branches ready for filming.
Certain parts of The Shire were filmed in multiple locations, such as Frodo at the very beginning of ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’; he begins reading under a tree in Wellington, runs down a path to meet Gandalf in Matamata and then returns to the countryside outside of Wellington to ride on Gandalf’s cart! In the space of about forty seconds of film time he’s been in a range of different places!
We learnt that there were a range of different sized Hobbit holes made so that filming with the various species would be easier, for example Gandalf would need to stand next to a small Hobbit hole so that it would make him look taller and more Wizard-like, whereas the Hobbits and Dwarven characters would need a bigger door so that they look small next to it.
There are a number of people employed as gardeners within The Shire and they do a fantastic job of keeping the flowers and vegetables growing and looking as if there are actually Hobbits living there! It’s fantastic.
The tour guide was incredibly knowledgeable about the films and had answers to the odd questions that people asked, I’m sure that they must get a lot of information drilled into them. He said that one of his friends is in the first film as a small child and that now the guy works at Hobbiton as a tour guide!
I enjoyed learning random snippets such as the children pictured with Samwise Gamgees and Rosie at the end of ‘The Return of the King’ are actually their own children: The toddler that runs up to Sam is his daughter and the baby in Rosie’s arm is actually her own baby! I think that is a really sweet touch.
After the walking tour each person is treated to a bevarage of their choice; all the drinks are brewed specially for Hobbiton. Ems and i both chose Ginger Beer…it was very tasty. The Green Dragon Inn is a working pub and you can actually hire it out for weddings and parties etc. How exciting. The tour guide did say that they have yet to actually host a themed wedding there…
Ems and I sat in the lovely Inn and drank our Ginger Beers in some comfy armchairs until we were told that we needed to get back on the tour
Our photos 🙂
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