From Now to January......: Hobbits

Hobbiton in New Zealand

I was in my early 20's when I first read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Rick gave me the LOTR set for my birthday, just before we were married. I had the habit of reading the trilogy every 2 to 3 years and Nick and Lauren even read them, so finally the books begin falling apart. I still have that set, but Rick gave me a new set about the same time the third movie came out. I still have my original Hobbit. I have seen the LOTR movies several times, but I have to admit I have only seen part of the Hobbit.

You can imagine how thrilled I was when Rick told me that the dinner for the conference he was attending included a tour of the Hobbit movie set and a dinner at the Green Dragon Inn. I tried not to get too excited or build up my expectations. When the bus pulled up to this building, that was obviously the ticket office and gift shop I thought, "is this it?" We had driven up this road and was pretty much on top of a hill and with a bunch of pastures and sheep. Then a tour guide came aboard our bus. We went through a series of gates, after all the set is located on an actual working sheep farm, and down a curvy road and we arrived. The guides explained to us that after the LOTR movies were filmed, the set was to be torn down, but some people were interested in touring the set. The hobbit holes were actually falling apart. The farmer decided to talk to Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema about keeping the set and running tours for people and now it is a tourist attraction that averages 1500 people a day.

We had a walking tour through the various hobbit holes, the party tree and finally Green Dragon Inn. It was a lovely evening, a very nice meal with music. It has been cloudy and rainy as we were driving to the site, but shortly after we arrived the drizzle stopped and we had a beautiful sunset. It did truly feel we were in the Shire.