An Adventure #1 – The Shire

I have gone to the other side of the world, and I have come home. Spiritually, I mean. I’m still abroad. You might almost say I’ve been there and back again.

It’s been a whirlwind first week of honeymoon: we started in Australia, ran frantically around Sydney from landmark to landmark, flew over to New Zealand, ran frantically around Auckland and up multiple volcanoes, grabbed a car, drove a few hours inland…

And came to Matamata. Though you might know it by another name.

Our introduction to the Shire proper was less than gentle, because we did it through the medium of an 11.1km run (because even for the bit, we couldn’t quite face a halfling-marathon). A run across the farms around, and through the actual set, of Hobbiton. This was amazing. It was also perhaps the most physically demanding thing we’ve ever done. I was feeling all smug when we first landed, thinking ‘yeah, we’ve been doing lots of practice runs, it’s a long way but we’ll be absolutely fine.’ Dear reader, we practiced on flat ground. This is the Shire. It’s all hills. Hills and sheep-tracks and narrow paths and also boiling hot. We did not finish with a respectable time in any way, we (at a charitable estimate) only ran about half the distance because the hills were almost too steep just to walk, but we did finish, and we ran the last bit, and it was bloody great.

BeforeAfter

I didn’t quite have time, when we were running through it, to fully appreciate the beautiful Hobbit idyll around me. Which is why we went back this morning for a more sedate tour.

It will come as no surprise to any of you that I adore The Lord of the Rings in all its forms, and I have done since I was very, very small. I am in every aspect apart from height – and even then, not that far off – a hobbit; I have always said that, given that I did actually grow up in Herefordshire and Shropshire, I come from the Shire. And now I have been there,  in truth. And it is astonishing.

They tore down the set from the original film trilogy, because it was made of foam and cardboard, but when the time came to film The Hobbit movies they rebuilt it and this time properly. Wood and stone and real flowers, real vegetables in some of the gardens, woodsmoke from the chimneys. Some of the holes are very small, because Forced Perspective Cleverness; most of them are just facades, including Bag End itself, because they shot all the interiors in studio… but there are a couple that you can go inside. And the sheer detail would make Tolkien weep.

Children’s toys, and clothes, and an actual full-on newspaper, written by the scriptwriters (that for some reason you can’t buy, grr); there are letters in the postboxes, water dribbling from the pumps. It’s perfect. I wouldn’t have been surprised if some of the extras had never left. We did try to hide but our guide eventually found us in the wine-cellar and dragged us off to second breakfast. (Which we did have, at the Green Dragon, and which was delicious.)

I am a big nerd, as is my wife. We wandered around in our cloaks and took hundreds of photos and just beamed at it all. Because we had stepped into Middle-Earth. And I had been feeling this way, in truth, since the moment we turned off the main road and onto the winding hill-roads that come up to Matamata and through the farms around Hobbiton. I idealise the landscapes of my childhood, the flowing fields of my youth – just look at The Singer – but this was truly like stepping into a book, into the fantasy of my younger years, into a reality that I have so long admired and come back to and experienced in so many ways. Because when you read or watch The Lord of the Rings there are many beautiful things to behold: the Falls of Rauros, the endless plains below the golden hall of Meduseld, the White Tower, flawless Rivendell. Whether you’re watching Peter Jackson’s films or reading Tolkien’s prose you are always transported, or at least I am.

But there is one place that holds my heart, every time, whether on page or screen. There is the Shire. It is peaceful, it is beautiful. It is home. And they found the perfect place to build it, and build it they did, and now I have been there.

We had to leave, eventually. We took our last few photos, we drove off. We made it about 200 yards out of the car park before we stopped at a nice little viewpoint, because the sun was up and the view was lovely. And then I cried. I properly broke down in tears, and when my wonderful wife partly reassembled me and asked if I was alright, all I could say was ‘it’s just so beautiful’. And it is. And yes, it’s been a busy few weeks, and I was tired and stressed by many small things because holidays like this are wonderful but not always relaxing, and on top of all that we were physically shattered because of the bloody run.

The offending view.

But it was just so beautiful. And I didn’t want to leave. Because, in a way, I’ve always been there, in my heart. And it felt like coming home.