Hobbiton is Even Better Than I Expected

For this trip, Pedro and I left our laptops at home due to their weight, and brought only our iPads to work. It has been challenging to learn the Apple way of posting to a blog, when all I have ever done is post from a PC. But I am an old dog learning new tricks!

I included the top image through the bus windows to help you join me in the setting of the northern part of the North Island of New Zealand. The town of Matamata is almost two hours drive southeast of Auckland. And that is where we found Hobbiton. I took hundreds of photos, but I’ll spare you. With only a few photos, you can get the sense of what is there.

Main reason I hate joining tour groups: the schedule never matches what I want. In this case, our group of 35 Tolkien fans has a lot of people who want to “recreate the scene.” Which means, wear costumes like characters in the movie, then have props and reenact scenes from the movies. It’s fun, and a great idea, but Pedro and I pretty much don’t care about this particular activity. Nearly everyone else does though. So the tour guides ask everyone to get out of the way and then they invite people to recreate the scene, over and over and over again, until everyone has had a chance and all the photos are taken. Then we scurry to the next very cool, recognizable spot, are asked to move out of the way, and do it all again.

OK! I got that out of my system, and I plan not to complain again. In some cases, I do not get a very good photo of the recognizable movie scene, and I just explained why. First example is the one above, which is the place in where we first see Gandalf entering Hobbiton in his cart, in the movie Fellowship of the Ring. The two rock walls on either side of this lane were one of the main things I hoped to see. In the photo, you’ll see the rock walls and green grasses, and our new friend, Elise, in her Hobbit garb.

We LOVED Hobbiton, and I knew I would love it. What I didn’t know until we began the tour was that this was the first of many Lord of the Rings/Hobbit/Rings of Power sites that are actually vastly more amazing in real life. Hobbiton has been perfected to the smallest detail, unlike movie sets we just saw a few months ago at Universal Studios Hollywood. The gardens are one example. Hobbits love the land, and are excellent gardeners, and you see that reflected in every direction.

There were two things that blew my mind about this place: first the size; the sheer acreage (nearly 12 acres/4.8 hectares). And second, the newly opened section in which Hobbit houses have been completed inside. But I’ll get to that at the end.

This is a movie set, and originally the plan was to return the land to its pre-movie state after the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy movies were complete. That was mostly done, but remnants remained, and attracted fans like flowers attract bees. This land is surrounded by the Alexander family farm which is active and has a flock of sheep (and pesky wild goats, as well, that like to eat the movie set.). Tours began, just with the bits and pieces that were left. But then…the Hobbit movies were made, and Peter Jackson got permission to rebuild the entire town once more.

In the photo above, you might noticed my terrible sunburn that I received for not taking good care of myself at Rangitoto Island the day before. Pedro was also burned. The two of us suffered pain, then itching, then peeling – and we’re holding steady in that phase today, 7 days later. The hat is borrowed, but perfect for hiding from the sun.

After the Hobbit movies were filmed, the movie set was left with the intent to open it to fans. There are now 44 Hobbit holes, most only a facade, but a few of them have openings wide enough to walk into. These are simply a dirt cave inside, large enough to turn around and walk back out. The holes are also built to different scales. In Middle Earth, Hobbits, Dwarves, and Wizards are different sizes. To make it look right for the movie, some are built tiny, to make Ian McKellen look huge, some midsize to make Richard Armitage look large, and some oversized, to make Ian Holm and Martin Freeman look like they fit right in.

The tour company we chose is a single family-owned Red Carpet Tours, and my Internet research found multiple testimonials from customers who claimed this was the best one of the three I found that take people around the country to see many LOTR sites. Now that we are on the tour, I am sure this is true. During the tour we have heard multiple stories of how hard members of this family worked to find particular sites. They drove hours on empty country roads, climbed through fences in secret, got friendly with bar owners and baristas and got them to dish out details, until they could find an exact film location. Then they would plead with the property owner for permission to bring tourists. One by one, they continued to add sites to see. They are true fans, and have endeared themselves to some of the movie people. I would not be surprised to learn that we have been allowed access that other tours don’t get.

And now you see why I won’t complain about being on a tour anymore: because there is no way Pedro and I could have access to everything we are getting on this tour. It is out of this world. Worth every penny and the trouble of getting here.

The interiors were opened December 1, 2023. These interiors were created by some of the same people who worked on the movie sets, and the attention to detail is phenomenal.

Please come with me inside. There are lots of rooms, and something to make you smile in here somewhere. Click through the slideshow.

I mentioned earlier that I took hundreds of photos, and some are better than these, I’m sure, but this gives you a good impression of the place. It was almost worth going all the way to New Zealand just to see Hobbiton. Now, if you are not a fan, and have never read the books, or you thought the movies were dull, I still think that it would appeal to nature lovers (bees, butterflies, birds, and lush vegetation everywhere) or even curious people (it’s interesting to experience a different culture). The setting is lovely, the staff is lovely.

You will likely end by deciding that you could be quite happy living there. Well, I speak for myself at least.

Birds spotted in the Shire: Though it’s a better photo of a House Sparrow, I already had one. So it’s 2 new birds, for a total of 8 New Zealand birds so far.