Did you know 'Tolkien Tourism' has its own Wikipedia page? Mm, yup - Tolkien Tourism.
It's basically the term used to describe the pilgrimage fans of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film franchises take to the locations that stand in for places described in Tolkien's original novels in the films.
As the films were filmed almost entirely in New Zealand, that's pretty much where these 'Ringers' (as I've just learned they're called) want to go. Now I wouldn't call myself a Ringer, not even close, and I didn't make it to Hobbiton sadly, but even I knew that leaving New Zealand without seeing Mount Doom would be 'literarily' (the red wiggly line tells me this is not a word?) blasphemous.
It's basically the term used to describe the pilgrimage fans of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film franchises take to the locations that stand in for places described in Tolkien's original novels in the films.
As the films were filmed almost entirely in New Zealand, that's pretty much where these 'Ringers' (as I've just learned they're called) want to go. Now I wouldn't call myself a Ringer, not even close, and I didn't make it to Hobbiton sadly, but even I knew that leaving New Zealand without seeing Mount Doom would be 'literarily' (the red wiggly line tells me this is not a word?) blasphemous.
I would have loved to do the Tongariro Crossing where you trek between the two volcanoes and climb Mount Doom itself, but time was not on my side sadly.
I'm sure New Zealand has a weird relationship with Lord of the Rings. On the one side, you don't exactly want your distinguishing feature to be your use as a film set, but on the other side I'm pretty sure half the planet didn't know New Zealand was a place you could actually go, let alone that it was as beautiful as it is. I mean what else would let you get away with hanging a huge model of Gollum over the departure lounge at Wellington Airport?
With horses grazing on the lush green mountains, turquoise lakes, milky glacier rivers, the clear blue ocean of the Coromandel Penninsula and the dramatic jet black rocks and moody waters of the South Island, Peter Jackson probably couldn't have found a more perfect Middle Earth.
I was lucky to walk in the shadows of Mount Doom, took some hobbits horses to Isengard and through the Dead Marshes, cycle through Rohan and go through the forests of Rivendell, Dimrill Dale and Chetwood Forest.
Embarrassingly, it was actually the latest adaptation of CS Lewis's Prince Caspian that first made me want to go to New Zealand. Using Cathedral Cove, the film captured a very different side to New Zealand but no less beautiful - I mean seriously? This place exists? This planet is awesome.
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