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Bag End at Hobbiton
WHAT is Hobbiton? Is it a real place? Can you actually go there?
FANS of J.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings flock to New Zealand to visit Hobbiton and some follow guides to other locations around NZ which appeared in scenes from the series of movies.
BTW', if you’re like me you probably keep mis-spelling ‘Hobbiton’ as ‘Hobbitown’ or ‘Hobbitton’. You’re not alone. I apologise in advance if I haven’t corrected my spelling anywhere in this post.
We went to Queenstown in NZ’s South Island on a family skiing holiday, so planned to fly back to Auckland and spend a day at Hobbiton, driving out 2.5 hours from Auckland to Matamata near Hamilton, although there are also tours from Rotorua.
The obviously fictional history of Hobbiton is that Bungo Baggins built Bag End in The Hill and Bilbo held a party there in T.A. 2941 and a farewell party in T. A. 3001 to celebrate his and Frodo’s birthdays and his departure from the Shire.
Hobbiton was devastated by Saruman’s treachery, but Samwise Gamgee rebuilt Hobbiton with soil from Galadriel’s garden.
The movie set was built on the Alexander farm where Lord of the Rings filming began in December 1999 and took three months. The Hobbit was filmed in 2012-2013, after some of the original set was rebuilt.
Map of Hobbiton
The set is on a lush curving hillside inset with building exteriors, apart from the inn, as most internal scenes were filmed by Peter Jackson in a studio in Invercargill.
At Shire’s Rest we parked, presented our tickets and waited with our guide for the coach to take us on the 10-minute drive to the movie set across green hills.
It was fun walking around the village and seeing the facades of the underground homes from the movies.
Our guide asked us to carefully study the tree on the hilltop above Bag End, and we realised it is actually made of metal, but looked so realistic we hadn’t noticed.
Metal tree looks realistic.
Many family photos were taken in front of the facades as we goofed around trying to act like Hobbits in scenes from the movies.
The grandchildren were particularly into the re-enacting, although the adults might also have done some posing. I myself had a couple of Gandalf moments, pretending to knock on the door of Bag End and call out, ‘Bilbo – open up!’ The family groaned, of course.
It was interesting to see that scenes which appeared expansive in the movies were actually small in real life, thanks to the effects of the cameras.
The 2.5-hour experience includes a 1.5 hour guided walking tour with time at Bagshot Row and 20 minutes at the Green Dragon Inn including a complimentary Hobbit-style tasty Southfarthing Range beer. There are also tour options which include an evening banquet, lunch or second breakfast.
Green Dragon Inn exterior.
As the set is on a private property you can’t just drive in, and have to go to the Shire’s Rest reception centre and join a booked tour with a guide. Some tours also go to Waitomo Caves.
Book online in advance as tour places are limited and can sell out, particularly during the December-January summer months.
Cameras are welcome, but not drones. There is a Summer Harvest Festival and a Mid-Winter Feast. People have even proposed marriage at Hobbitown, sometimes in the Inn at the end of the tour.
No accommodation is available at the movie set, but there is a Hobbit Motel at Woodlyn Park beneath a hill where sheep and donkeys wander for grazing, and accommodation at nearby towns.
Serious fans follow guides to other movie sites around New Zealand, which were digitally-enhanced for the movies.
They include Fiordland National Park, Mount Sunday, for the main city of Rohan, Endoras; Mount Victoria near Wellington where scenes of the Hobbits leaving the Shire were filmed, and Mt Earnslaw and Paradise in Glenorchy which appeared in the opening sequence of the Two Towers.
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