Hobbiton!

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.”

-Bilbo Baggins to Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Photo credit: E.D. Meilutis 2020

We went to Hobbiton!

To get there we needed to take an Intercity bus from the Hamilton Transport Centre to Matamata, which takes about an hour.

We had a peek around the gift shop located at the Matamata i-Site (information centre) and visited the surprisingly clean public washrooms. So far this is a trend with New Zealand, they keep their public toilets clean, yay! Then we grabbed breakfast at a local diner before heading back to the i-Site to grab our bus to Hobbiton!

On the left: our feet by decorative paving stones, photo credit goes to A. Beaulieu, 2020.
On the right: the i-Site visitor center in Matamata, the starting point of many Hobbiton tours, photo credit goes to E.D. Meilutis, 2020.

There is a drought on the North Island of New Zealand, so most of the countryside is a straw-yellow colour. It seems silly to waste water on keeping Hobbiton green, but on the other hand, it is a massive tourist site...

We stopped to pick up some more tourists and our tour guide at the Hobbiton parking lot. People can't drive into Hobbiton, think of how it would disturb the Hobbits! Also, the roads as you approach Hobbiton are some of the most winding, serpent-like roads I have ever seen. I'm pretty sure the introduction video they put on in the bus is just to distract passengers from just how insane the hairpin turns on that road are.

Pulling into Hobbiton means pulling into a parking lot with a clearing to the side of it. Not that spectacular yet, this is where our tour guide signaled it as being our last chance to use the washrooms until the end of the tour in two hours time and explained some of the rules and regulations of Hobbiton.

For example:

• Yes, most of the vegetables are real, don't pick them.
• There are paths for hobbits (small, winding trails) and paths for humans. You are a human, stay in your lane.
• Feel free to take as many hobbit pictures as you like. (I learned here that a hobbit picture is when you take your shoes off to kneel on them to make yourself look hobbit-sized!)

Then we followed a human-sized path through the trees to Hobbiton.

Welcome to Hobbiton! Photo credit: E.D. Meilutis, 2020.

The walk through Hobbiton is beautiful. It's also a little long and that day was far too hot. The tour we took was a two-hour walking tour, which means there's plenty of time to admire just how beautiful it is and to take pictures of all the hobbit holes lined by the human-sized paths.

Of the 40+ hobbit holes in Hobbiton, I have pictures of about 20 of them. Here are my favourite 4. Photo credit: E.D. Meilutis, 2020.

There are over forty hobbit holes in Hobbiton, when Lord of the Rings was filmed, the agreement with the landowner and farmer was to make temporary installments and then take it all down once filming was done. As filming was done in order of locations, the scenes at the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy set recognizably in Hobbiton were actually filmed last.

When they returned to film the trilogy of movies for The Hobbit, permanent hobbit holes were made. This was because despite there being not much to look at, people still showed up between the making of the two trilogies to look at some grassy hills.

Making permanent hobbit holes means that they had to comply with New Zealand building code, so they all have running electricity. But nothing inside them. Most hobbit holes open onto a space as exciting as an empty closet. Our tour guide did warn us ahead of time that if we tried to peek inside the hobbit holes that's what we would find, as one time she forgot to warn people and someone cried.

The tour we took simply meanders through Hobbiton with frequent stops of pictures of the hobbit holes. There are water pumps (not fountains) to hydrate with, but they appear to have been designed by Merry and Pippin as the water comes out the top and goes for your eye instead of your mouth, as one of the moms on our tour was delighted to show her son.

The meandering through Hobbiton slowly leads to the Hobbit hole, the mansion of the town, castle on the hill, Bag End.

Bag End! Photo credit: E.D. Meilutis 2020

With this tour you can't walk up to the door of Bag End except on party business, but it was lovely to still have a peek at it. There is an evening tour that involves a feast and gets really into the nitty-gritty-geeky of Hobbiton for those truly committed, but there are no buses back to Hamilton that late, so we were quite happy to stick to the daytime frolic tour of Hobbiton.

As it was, we still got to hear about how the tree over Bag End was made. It's the only fake tree in Hobbiton, made by Weta, and is made out of steel and foam. The leaves were stitched on individually by hand and at one point had to be repainted as they weren't the right shade of green.

Seeing Bag End is the pinnacle of the stroll through Hobbiton, from there we strolled past more hobbit holes, including Sam's humble abode (he was after all, a gardener).

Number 2 and 3 of Bagshot Row, number 3 (yellow door) was the home of Samwise Gamgee until Frodo left him Bag End. Photo credit: E.D. Meilutis, 2020.

The tour ended with a stop at the Green Dragon for a generous half-pint (if you want a full pint you have to go to Bree) of one of the four in-house brews they have on offer. There's a pale ale, an amber ale (if memory serves), an apple cider (yes please!) and a non-alcoholic ginger beer.

The walk through Hobbiton was hot and sitting down out of the sun was much appreciated, especially when you can enjoy a view out over Hobbiton.

Leaving Hobbiton was like leaving everything green and good behind. Thankfully when you do leave Middle-Earth, you find yourself in New Zealand, which isn't bad at all!

From the Green Dragon. Photo credit: E.D. Meilutis, 2020.

Events described took place on February 25, 2020.