Stuck in the Middle (Earth) with you – A Trip to Hobbiton, New Zealand

One of the many Hobbit Doorways

Following our surfing adventure (don’t worry if you haven’t read this one, you can here “Catch A Wave”) we left Raglan (well Whatamata) early morning, said our goodbyes to Pip, John (and the Rainbow house, it has feeling too you know) and headed towards the land of dwarfs, elves and shire folk (I don’t mean Cornwall!!) but middle earth or rather Hobbiton. If you’re following our trip on your New Zealand map, (you can check our route here) we started in Auckland, headed northwards to Paihia and Bay of Islands (you can read our earlier blog post “Other side of the world” here) then travelled South, passed Auckland and down to Whatamata and Raglan. We were now travelling east, across North Island, New Zealand passed Hamilton towards Hobbiton. Hobbiton is found half way between Hamilton and Rotorua, in the middle of farmland. The film set Hobbiton for Lord of the Rings (this will now be known as LOTR as I can’t be bothered to write Lord of the Rings every time, I know I’m lazy!!) and for The Hobbit, was left by Peter Jackson after filming and has now been turned into a tourist attraction. Everywhere in New Zealand claims to have had something to do with LOTR (hope you know this means Lord of the Rings ha ha) or part of the film has been filmed there (gets quite annoying after a while) even our horse trekking trip advertised the location as a place where LOTR could have been filmed but wasn’t!!! (not that everyone is trying to cash in) but thats for another blog post.

Hobbiton was the first real touristy thing we had done and at $75NZ or  one of the most expensive. We arrived at The Shires Rest at 11am and parked up, we couldn’t see Hobbiton, only a large reception building with LOTR advertisements around it. The sun was blazing hot, the sweat had already started dripping by the time we made the short stroll across the gravel car park to the barn like reception building. We asked for two tickets, got asked if we had booked a time (didn’t know you needed to do this, it surely wasn’t that busy) so got allocated the next available slot which was 40 minutes later. The reason for the time bookings is simple, they want to restrict the amount of visitors into Hobbiton, 1. To make the Groups manageable for the tour guide 2. It makes it easier to keep an eye out for damage in Hobbiton and 3. It adds to the enjoyment for the tourists and not overcrowding (fair enough I thought). To help passed the time till, we brought an overly expensive Cafe Latte, a lemon soft drink and sat out on the balcony overlooking the lovely green rolling hills of the surrounding area, thinking that we could actually be in Cornwall.

Suddenly in the distance, over one of the hills, a big cloud of dust could be seen and chugging into view was an old 1950’s coach, painted green and cream. This was to be our transportation to Hobbiton, (I wasn’t holding out much hope of getting there) so we finished off drinks and our time slot was called out. We boarded the bus for a short ride back over the hills to Hobbiton, and following a few crunches of the 1950’s gearbox, the driver had us on our way (Stiff Cliff Richard and Summer Holiday came to mind)

Our Chariot Awaits

The ride only takes ten minutes but is pretty hair-raising with steep hills, long drops on either side of the narrow gravel path and sheep crossing in front of the bus at every given moment. Finally we arrived at Hobbiton, you’ll know from previous posts (The Neighbour) that I know that size counts in the eyes of Cosmopolitan magazine and unfortunately Hobbiton doesn’t measure up, it’s small. I know it was built for Hobbits and should be small, but I’m sorry to say Hobbits are not real and the films used real life-sized actors (I know a shock for me as well). We entered The Shire (well walked through a small hedge) and our tour guide started to explain what happened here in LOTR, Gandalf did this, Frodo did that etc. Not being a devoted fan of the trilogy and having only seen them once or twice I wasn’t so excited by the tails our guide was thrilled about (neither was Rach or the group) so everyone seemed to walk off taking as many photos as they could in-front of small doorways, painted in a multitude of colours.

Tree on top of Bag End, Bilbo Baggin’s House

We got our photos and started to climb the hill to Bilbo Baggin’s house, past more Hobbit doorways, again more photo points in front of doors until we got to the top. By this time I’d seen enough doorways and windows to last me a lifetime, so when reaching Bilbo’s house and finding out you couldn’t go inside, it was all a bit of an anti-climax.

Once everyone had eagerly taken their photos in front of Bilbos house, we made our way back down the hill (still hot and blazing with sunshine), passed more Hobbit doorways to the Party Tree made famous in the first LOTR film. Again our guide told us more tales about filming LOTR, how the crew had to drink a weakened beer for Bilbo’s party whilst filming (bit unfair really, I mean having to sit in a field for a few weeks during filming, least they could have done is given them good beer). The Party Tree was another hot-spot for photos and everyone excitedly snapped away their loved ones standing in front of the tree (myself and Rach though just thought it was a tree like the thousands we had passed in New Zealand already, I mean, you’ll get home, look at your holiday snaps a few months later thinking why the blooming heck did I take all those photos of us infront of a tree??) After ten minutes our tour guide said we could carry on across a lush green meadow behind the Party Tree, cross over the river via a bridge and passed an old stone water wheel (which is used in LOTR, although no plaque to highlight this) and into the Green Dragon, a purpose-built pub filmed for the end of the LOTR trilogy, where Sam and Frodo enjoy a beer at the welcome home party.

Waterwheel from LOTR

Our tour included a drink in the pub, so you can either enjoy a beer, wine, cider or soft drink and as I was driving, I had a Ginger Beer, Rach a locally brewed Cider which was good-by all accounts. We had 30 minutes in the pub, everyone busily taking photos of the inside, before we were summoned by our tour guide as the bus had arrived to take us back to reception.

My review of Hobbition is that although my blog post seems a bit negative, its pretty good for the couple of hours you are there, particularly if you’re a big LOTR fan. The problem is due to the price you get charged for entry, it’s very expensive and certainly not value for money. Although I’m sure if you really are a big LOTR fan you will enjoy the trip, I think that they could make much more of it though, like having helpers dressed up in LOTR costumes, maybe an Orc or two or even have Orlando Bloom welcoming guests (he’s not up to much now is he? most of his films since have been a bit rubbish)

After Hobbiton it was time to jump into our car again and make the trip down to Rotorua (was really looking forward to this) and then onto Taupo and Tongariro National Park (or Mt. Doom as it’s now famous for) but that’s the next blog post.