Another Hobbit photo or 2 or 3!!

At the entrance to the Hobbiton location there is a restaurant called appropriately Shire's Rest and it was there I found this which rather tickled my fancy.

The one Hobbit hole that is actually able to be entered (all the others are facades only) was only made that way as camermen had to get in it and sit to take a photo of two hobbits and their high jinks on the stone steps outside and in the window of the Hobbit Hole next door - but it makes an excellent photo stop now.

The stone steps up to Bag End are genuine stone although placed to look natural by the set creators from New Line Cinemas! But the stone bridge across the lake over which the cart is driven is actually wood coated in polystyrene bricks sprayed with a concrete plaster and painted. The guide showed us a brick to prove it!

The first stop on the tour is the lookout towards the lake and the market area.

New Line Cinema's didn't leave anything there except this excellent photoboard so you can see what it looked like during filming. The film company bought a plant nursery company so that they could produce all the flowers for the Hobbit Hole gardens and for the vegetable gardens. This of course is farm land and they had some trouble with natural pests like rabbits and oppossums but a solution was found - the plants were pumped full of hormones to make them grow large and plump (and consequently more attractive to the pests) and then large amounts of poisons to make them very unattractive! And of course afterwards they were disposed of safely and the ground etc sterilised all at the film company cost. No wonder this was a high budget trilogy - their attention to detail was amazing. Now of course it is just a lovely green hill! With a row of hobbit holes . But it was this natural depression and the large pine tree by the lake that attracted the location scouts as they flew over the farm and then gave the farmer quite a shock when they interrupted him watching rugby on TV and asked him to sign a contract so his farm could be a film location!

At the end of the tour there is a place where if you stand on the spot marked X and hold your hand in just the right way you can get this type of photo. Doesn't my friend Chie look appropriately dark and hobbit like?! Or rather don't I look like an inappropriate 21st century Goliath!

And so endeth my journey to Hobbiton.