We took a day trip out to Hobbiton, the movie set where the Shire was filmed in The Lord Of The Rings. Only part of the shire remained but it was amazing to see. We seen the areas where Frodo met Gandalf. Bilbo's and Sam's house and the party tree where Bilbo disappeared. It was really cool to see it in real life..

We also got to go inside Bilbo's house and look out over the Shire. Peter Jackson went soo far out of his way to make it as perfect as possible and the attention to detail in some of the areas is amazing in film. All the props were taken away when we were there but an example of the extremities he went to create the Shire is the Oak tree overhanging the Shire. There were no oak trees in the area so Peter Jackson found a tree a couple of hundred km away and chopped it up (not him personally) into pieces, documented each piece and transported it to the movie set. The tree was rebuilt onsite and stuck together with wire.

All the leaves were removed from the tree and 250,000 Oak leaves were imported from Taiwan where teams of people stapled them onto this reconstructed tree! Incredible amount of effort especially since the tree only appears for 20 seconds in the film. Check out the photos....