Omg, omg, oh my freaking god!
Excuse the excitable fangirl in me but seriously I could not have been more excited to visit Hobbiton Movie Set. I am in New Zealand, of course, I’m going, there was no doubt in that.
Gray Line tours do a day combination tour and with their tours, you get to have a drink in the green dragon and have lunch there! Hmm shut up and take my money! Yep, I was totally going that, and I can honestly say that I was not disappointed by the tour package.
We firstly arrived at the ticket office and gift shop, it was a quick wee stop, and we got to go on our luxury coach, and we picked up our Hobbiton tour guide, ‘River’ (yes that was her real name, but she accepts Creek, also stream hehe).
We drove through the rolling hills of the beautiful 1,250-acre sheep farm, with stunning views of the Kaimai Ranges.
We passed a few of the technical stations and maintenance areas that were used for the making of the movies, but I wanted to see Hobbit sets! Okay, so I was very excited and couldn’t wait. We parked up and made our way down a narrow path, yes! Why yes! It was the same route used in the opening sequence in one of the movies, Eeeek and then it hits you, that stunning view, it is breathtaking. It is every fangirl’s dream; it was so breathtaking, and the detail was intense.
I had read that Peter Jackson (the infamous director) was a stickler for complete and total detail, and that was confirmed by our lovely tour guide, when she said that he had hired a person to put out the hobbits washing out every morning and bring it back in every evening, just to press the grass down in a real way for the sweeping shot across middle earth, blimey! Just blimey! Seems crazy but that is how you make a fantastic set of movies.
We were walked around this superb set and showered by great tip bits of information about how, when and why everything came to be there, it was just like a dream. Everything looked so real, so polished and not to mention so cute. We walked through the town, passed the fishmonger, the clay pot makers, the carpenter’s lovely tiny house! It was adorable and of course, we took about a billion pictures of every intricate detail. As we made our way around this beautiful place we climbed the sweeping hills to the shire, the real views came into play, we looked out and couldn’t see any signs of the modern world; it was as we were standing in middle earth, I was just in complete awe……. Complete awe of the whole place.
As we made our way up, the shire was getting closer and closer; eek eek! That beautiful shade of green on the door, is so iconic, it was such a shame that we couldn’t go inside but it was an amazing none the same, and as you turn around and look out you can see the whole village, I’m so very glad that the sun was shining as it made the experience so much better.
We stood there for a while and spotted the green dragon pub, oooh yeah and we get to have a drink in theirs! Yay, so we made our way down and around the sweeping hills again and somewhat marched to the charming olde worldly pub. Yep! This spectacular building was so beautiful, a real log fire, and a fantastic double bar with the choice of pale ale, cider, dark ale or ginger beer. Oooooh, it was served in ceramic tankers and tasted lovely, especially sitting next to the open fire.
Our tour guide river leads us to a superior canvas tent for our buffet lunch; this tent was set out in such a beautiful way and the home-style food was a delight too. We were truly spoilt for choice and a lovely way to finish our morning at Hobbiton.
