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Post date: Apr 07, 2013 9:32:57 AM
Hopefully from the photos you get a bit of a sense of the place.
Even those who hadn't seen the movies were impressed. Only challenge we had was there was more walking over uneven ground than we had allowed for so the two wheelchairs had to be pushed by a variety of willing helpers. By the time we got back to camp we had to cancel the planned evening children's activity and instead they had a long soak n the hot pool.
Apologies again to Adrian but the Hobbiton visit which I was kind of Ho hum about really was a weekend highlight. Hobbiton provided access to all 105 of us at no cost - usual adult cost is $75. I don't think it was worth $75 even with the glass of ginger beer or cider thrown in but judging by the hundreds of others there yesterday I am in the minority.There is some great trivia as part of the tour and it was interesting to see all, the adults came back with be piece of information that had left them gob smacked like
$75 a head to visit
The fact that even though this is set on a farm with 12000 sheep not one of the sheep featured in the movie - NZ. sheep look too modern so Peter Jackson imported English sheep for the films
Billy Boyd's real children feature at the end of the 3rd LoTR film when his character returns to Hobbiton. The baby in the movie is now 14
Our tour guide's house which you can see from one angle of the set was edited out of all the movies at a cost of $6 mill. The house was pretty ordinary and would have cost less to demolish and rebuild later.
There are 8 full time gardener a employed to maintain the 33 remaining hobbit houses. The gardens are incredible.
The actual houses only go for about a metre inside - all the internal scenes were filmed in Wellington studios
The Mill House and the pub are life size and working buildings
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