Hobbiton Movie Tour

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We are greeted at the start of our tour aboard the dark green Hobbiton tour bus by our bus driver whose opening gambit is 'My name's Danny and I'm a terrible driver. It takes about an hour to get to Hobbiton, I usually sleep!'. And so the silliness continues with our hells angels look alike bus driver Danny. He tells us about the spelling of some place names with 'wh' being pronounced similarly to 'ph' as 'f' the best version of this being a place called Whuka Whuka! Who knows if it's true, Danny seems a bit of a leg puller.

We find out that the farm used for the Hobbiton set was chosen after lots of flying over countryside to find the perfect mix of rolling hills with trees dotted about and views all round without view of roads, buildings etc. The Alexander's dry stock farm was chosen and the first work started with the help of New Zealand's armed forces putting in a road. While the set was being built 120 vehicles a day were taking in workers and building materials. There were two sets made one less permanent for the first film, mostly made of polystyrene (the set was re-named Polywood) and the second of more permanent materials. During filming over 2000 people would be on site on any one day. With hobbit costume and make-up taking two hours and there being hundreds of extras it's not really surprising how many people were needed.

We arrive and meet our guide Sonny who takes us round the site giving us loads of film references that go completely over my head. I watched a couple of the films, just once. I'm really not that into it, just show us the cute Hobbit houses. The whole set is fabulous and the little Hobbit homes are adorable. There's so much detail, making each one completely unique. There's little washing lines with Hobbit clothes out to dry, gorgeous painted letter boxes, bells to ding on the doors, little wheel barrows with sacks of flour on, baskets of fruit and vegetables, fish hanging up to dry, stacks of firewood etc. We learn that the house fronts only go back a few feet into the hillside, the interiors being filmed in a studio and they are all made at different ratios to life size so that when Gandalf stood next to them he appeared huge in comparison.

Once we've been around all the Hobbit houses including a stop outside Bilbo Begins' house, we head towards the Green Dragon Inn for a drink (cider for me). This is one Hobbit building we can go inside. I want to live there, it's so cute.

What a great place and still there thanks to an enterprising member of the Alexander farming family whose land the filming took place on, stopping the set being dismantled and persuading the film company to let them use it as a tourist attraction.

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