A while back, I was lucky enough to spend an afternoon wandering the Hobbiton movie set, which can be found near the town of Matamata in New Zealand. When I visited, I was made to sign a lengthy and complex non disclosure agreement, which meant that whilst I could drink in all the hobbity wonder on offer, I couldn’t share it with you. Instead, I wrote a post about what … [Read more...]
Lord of the Rings Filming Locations in New Zealand
The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, as imagined by Peter Jackson in the film adaption of the books, serves as a highly effective tourism advert for New Zealand. Having seen all the films, and being a bit of a Tolkien fan, it was inevitable that New Zealand would make it onto my list of places I must visit. And so it happened that I spent a year travelling around New … [Read more...]
Wanders through Wellington
Having babbled on at some length as to the virtues of Dunedin, it is now time to turn my attention to my other favourite Kiwi city - which also happens to be the countries capital – the city of Wellington. Wellington is tucked away on the southern tip of the North island, and most travellers will visit, even if only on their way to the ferry. It would be a shame to skip … [Read more...]
The ongoing quest for middle earth
I know I know. It’s starting to become a bit of an obsession. More so than the lighthouses. Even Vera is starting to think I’m getting a bit weird with all this Tolkien searching. But still. Since I’m in New Zealand, and I am a slight Lord of the Rings fan (addicted since I was about five I think, when parts of the book were read out at a class assembly for some reason), it … [Read more...]
Rivendell and beyond
You may think, having read some of my posts on exploring the world of Tolkien as it has been realised in New Zealand, that the filming locations from the three Lord of the Rings films are treated as sacred, almost hallowed ground. You probably imagine that domes have been carefully placed over the sites in question, hermetically sealing the environment so that it can be … [Read more...]
Dimholt: Walking the roads of the dead
The ongoing quest to see as many parts of the Lord of the Rings scenery as possible has continued, with a trip to the Cape Palliser pinnacles, where Aragorn, Gimli and Leglolas spent some time wandering in order to awaken the army of the dead in Return of the King. Cape Palliser is near the bottom of the North island, a few stones throws away from Wellington. There is a … [Read more...]
What Hobbiton taught me
I recently visited the set of the Lord of the Rings filming location for Hobbiton in New Zealand. Sadly, that is about all I am allowed to actually write about the experience, due to a rather impressive looking piece of legal paper I had to sign that I’m pretty sure gives Peter Jackson the rights to my first born if I tell you any more. So don’t be expecting any … [Read more...]
Carrots, waterfalls and Gollum
I have been doing my homework recently on this whole blogging thing, with particular focus on the mystical world of SEO. SEO, for those of you not in the know (turns out I can rhyme too), is the art of optimising a site so that it is friendly to search engines, and by search engines, I mean Google. The idea is that people go onto the web searching for something, and as a … [Read more...]