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Published: January 24th 2011
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Day 99
13th December
We slept like logs, in fact it was one of the best night’s sleep we’d had since we’d left London 3 months previously. We also loved the little camp stove which was super powerful and we had an excellent breakfast of eggs, beans and toast, fabulous. We took our time heading off and eventually left the campsite on our way to Hobbiton.
Way back in 1999 when Peter Jackson was scouting for locations to film Lord of the Rings, he flew over this little known part of New Zealand, and thought it was perfect for the Shire/Hobbiton scenes. It was, (and still is) a huge sheep farm, and when Peter Jackson approached the owners to discuss filming there, they responded with, “What’s Lord of the Rings?” (!!). Although most of the other sets were destroyed after filming was completed, the owners managed to keep this one open and offer tours around the farm. Fortunately for us, they are currently rebuilding the set for the filming of the Hobbit which is due to start soon so there was a lot for us to see! We were also very lucky, because as soon as filming starts, the
tours have to stop. The tour company were anticipating this any day now.
Now we have to apologise for the distinct lack of photos on this blog. Before they let us on the set, we had to sign a watertight confidentiality contract not to post any photos of the set on line, it is very nearly completed and they don’t want images leaked. For that reason as well, we have to be a little vague about what we saw, we definitely do not have the money to fight Hollywood! Oooh this sounds so top secret!
The tour started with a bus ride across the farm to the area of the Hobbiton set. It was so strange, it all started to look really familiar! Again, we can’t be more specific, but we were shown the party field, the party tree, the mill, tavern, the lake, Samwise Gamgee’s house, many hobbit holes and of course Bag End! Ellory and I have since read both Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (inspired by being in New Zealand!) and we were both very impressed how accurately they have recreated J.R.R Tolkien’s vision. It was all very interesting and the set is
massive! They’ve really put in a lot of work to make it look as much like the book as possible.
We then were given a little talk about the sheep farm, apparently not one of the sheep on the farm was used in the films. This is because none of them have black faces (an English sheep thing I believe), so they bought in ‘stunt sheep’ for the films! Then one of the farmers proceeded to shear a sheep in front of us! I thought he was super fast, as he managed it in about 45 seconds, but apparently he’s out of practise! We also got to give the lambs their afternoon milk! That was so so cute, they got very overexcited and were climbing all over me to get the bottle. They knocked it back in about 30 seconds, speed drinkers! So it was a really good afternoon and although it wasn’t in our original plan, I was kind of glad the sat nav decided to have a strange moment. We would both really recommend to anyone in the area to go and visit before they shut it down for filming. (only if you like Lord of the
Rings though, I guess!)
However, as good as our detour was, we had to get to Waitomo so we got back in the campervan and headed back across the North Island to Waitomo. It took us a couple of hours to get there and we found another campsite for the night. It had started to rain and we hoped it would not last!
Love liz xxx
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