A visit to Hobbiton

We drove out to the Matamata region to where they created Hobbiton for the Lord of the Rings movies.  They queued us up here and put us in small groups of 25 or so to tour the hobbit village with a guide.  Very well organized and didn't feel like we were part of a giant throng.  Our guide said they are licensed to have a total of 3,500 visitors a day, and on big days like Christmas eve (when we were there), they expected to reach that number. 

We all applied sunscreen - having learned our lesson the previous day while spending time exploring Auckland.  We were all sporting reddish faces and burned backs of our necks.

The director selected a sheep ranch out in the rolling hills.  He was looking for natural trees, a large pond, and a hilled valley where they could shoot from every angle and not worry about any modern day features getting in the shot.  They found a great place. 

We found out that they made the hobbit holes in several different scaled sizes, so that depending on whether a hobbit was standing in front of it (normal size), or Gandalf was standing in front of it (needs to look tinier), it would be the right size.

This was the Green Dragon Inn.  It was one of a few buildings that had thatched roofs, built by thatching experts brought in from England to do the job properly.

The Pond and Mill.  It was fun to go back to the movies and watch again having seen these places and walked across this bridge just like the hobbits and Gandalf! 

Each hobbit hole was designed with a specific inhabitant in mind.  This was the cheesemakers with his wares out front.  They had all sorts of special little features if you stood and looked long enough at each dwelling. 

The Baker's

This is the Party Tree that was all lit up for Bilbo's 111th birthday celebration.  Apparently the styrofoam cake they used in the film caught on fire with all the candles on it and started burning while they were filming.  If you look closely during his speech making, you can see smoke from it in the background.  They liked the speech enough that they decided on that take in the end.

Just beautiful.

We got to stop for drinks at the Green Dragon at the end.  Delaney and I had the Ginger Beer.  David had the Amber Ale.

Looking down at the Party field from Bag End.

All the trees except one were live trees.  The tall tree above Bag End was a real trunk, but had fake leaves on it.  The director decided the color of the leaves was off and had the over 200,000 leaves repainted to a different green - craziness.  He also decided that plums were more appropriate fruit than pears and had plums wired on to a tree instead of the pears.  It appeared for a total of 3 seconds in the extended version of the film.

The Green Dragon across the pond.

The gardens were magnificent.  They had a whole host of gardeners on site who were working to maintain them.  Live vegetable gardens, etc. 

This smaller pond below Bag End was so full of boisterous frogs, that they had to fish them out and relocate them in order to get the sound right on set. 

The Green Dragon

Bag End before the Party.