Day 18: Hobbiton
“Bagginses? What is a Bagginses, precious?”
We woke up on day eighteen of our travels in a very peaceful campsite. Away from the road; next to a lake; and big enough to accommodate all of the campers. Our view from the bed wasn’t too bad…
We kicked things off by doing a bit of spring cleaning. It wasn’t planned, but we parked under a tree and when we went to leave — bearing in mind we’d had all of the doors open all morning — the van was full of what looked like baby mossies. Literally, they were everywhere. Just like when you look at the stars at night and the longer you look, the more you see; this was the same.
We’re not too sure if they were actually mossies or not, but we didn’t fancy bringing them along for the journey so we cleared them out the best we could with DEET spray before driving along with the windows wide open to try and flush out any stragglers.
Since all of this meant cleaning things up a little, we decided just to commit and take the van to a car wash (or van wash?). Rather than pay for the automatic car wash, we opted for the cheaper, and more comical, manual wash. This involved me running around the van with a pressure hose — trying not to slip over in my flip-flops (or jandals as Kiwis call them) — while Anna switched the hose settings. The one hose could switch between spraying water, soap, tyre cleaner, wax, and probably some other stuff, and our aim was to get it done in the two and a half minutes that the machine allowed.
Suffice to say, it ended up costing us two cycles and very nearly my life as I struggle to stay upright on the ever-wetter floor.
With all of that out of the way, we drove into Matamata to get our Hobbiton tickets from the i-SITE there.
For anyone that doesn’t know, Hobbiton is a man-made town that features in both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies, and it is where the hobbits live. It’s a very popular attraction in New Zealand, and after umming and ahhing about whether to go or not, we decided to go for it.
It’s fair to say that the whole area is shamelessly cashing in on the hype of the Hobbiton Movie Set, and I don’t blame them. This is what the i-SITE looks like…
Our tour wasn’t until the afternoon so we killed some time in Matamata — mainly in McDonald’s so I could catch up on these blogs — before hopping on our tour bus.
To give an idea of just how popular Hobbiton is, our tour group consisted of one coach-load of people and they were running tours every five minutes throughout the day! Because of this, it did feel a bit like a conveyor belt, and there were a number of occasions when we had to wait while every person in the group took a photo in front of a hobbit hole, but I guess that’s the price you pay for going in high season.
Anyway, besides that, Anna and I still had a fun day out. We hopped off the coach and things were already beginning to feel hobbit-y.
Now, neither Anna nor I have read the Lord of the Rings books or watched all three of the films all the way through. I have read The Hobbit and watched the films, but a lot of the references went over both of our heads. We did enjoy the setting and all of the attention to detail though, so I’ll focus on all of that.
This is what a hobbit hole looks like…
There are — I think — forty-four hobbit holes in Hobbiton altogether, and all of them are unique in some way. They also come in two different sizes. The one above is a big one. The bigs ones are used in scenes that hobbits appear in so that the hobbits look small. The smaller ones are used in scenes where other characters, like Gandalf, make an appearance to make them appear a lot bigger than the hobbits. The whole of Hobbiton is classed as an “exterior set”, meaning that it is only used to film outside scenes. This means that all of the hobbit holes are actually empty. All scenes filmed inside a hobbit hole were done in a studio somewhere.
Moving on through Hobbiton, we came to the vegetable garden…
Five gardeners work full-time to keep the set looking green and full of vegetables all year round. Despite, the number of people crammed into the little town, it did actually feel quite peaceful. There was a lot of different flowers in the village; there were butterflies everywhere; and the afternoon sun gave the whole place a relaxing, end-of-day feel.
Here’s our very own — very hairy-footed — hobbit in front of her new hole.
The star hobbit hole in Hobbiton is located in Bag End and belongs to the Bagginses — Bilbo and Frodo.
The oak tree above the hole is actually completely artificial and set designers had to stick on every leaf individually. When Peter Jackson arrived on set, he decided that the leaves were the wrong shade of green and so the set team then had to spray every leaf the “correct” shade of green!
The tour ended at the Green Dragon — Hobbiton’s pub.
This building, at least, was fully furnished and also big enough for humans to fit in. We got a free drink as part of the tour so I went for a cider and Anna chose a ginger beer. They aren’t made in Hobbiton, but they are locally brewed which is cool.
The attention to detail continued inside the pub, including a roaring log fire which was completely unnecessary given how hot the day was.
After wandering around the pub with our complimentary drinks, we got our tour guide to take a few photos before making our way back to the bus.
All in all, despite not being the cheapest of days out — 85 bucks a pop for a two-hour walking tour! — we both had a fun time and we’re now keen to go off and watch all of the films.
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