Hobbiton

An Unexpected journey

Hobbiton is a magical place, crafted to the detail and really well taken care of - the buildings, the props, the gardens, the mood... It was the perfect weather too: showers in the morning but clearing in the afternoon. All good ingredients for such a good time!

We started the visit through Gandalf's cutting, entering the garden and views to the hill, where most of the hobbit holes are, and slowly climbed our way to Bag End. Every hobbit hole was unique, with specific details and a different theme, but all of them were special. It was amazing to see at what level of detail they had been crafted.

After Bag End we arrived to the hobbit hole we could actually visit - it was never used for a movie, but it felt like it was. Full of creative props and everyday objects, redesigned for a hobbit lifestyle, full of patterns and colours.

After the banquet we went back to the bus to go see the backstage. Starting with the concept art room and the workshops - we could see the whole research and craft process, the material palette, and some people working there at the same time.

We finished the visit with Guillermo del Toro's hobbit holes, that were made when he was supposed to direct the movies. They had a bit of a different aesthetic but the same essence.

Now we want to craft stuff for a living.

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in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

it had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. the door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats - the hobbit was fond of visitors. the tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill - the hill, as all the people for many miles round called it - and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. no going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. the best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.



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- bAck to the logbook -

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