Rohan, Edoras and … a Corgi

The Lord of the Rings was filmed in several locations all over New Zealand. Even just flying into Queenstown on our arrival evoked images of many beautiful scenes from the movie.

So, it only made sense that we would take a “Lord of the Rings” based tour while we were here.

Mount Sunday, the location where Rohan and the city of Edoras, was filmed a three hour drive out of Christchurch. Edoras was featured in the second The Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers.

Here’s a larger pan of the valley with “Edoras” about 1/3rd the way in from the right.

The tour took us to the top of Edoras – this view is from looks towards the mountains used as the entrance to Helm’s Deep (the actual Helms Deep was filmed in a different location in New Zealand.)

As a pretty nifty side note: our driver was the Oscar Award Winning (honest!) Hammond Peek – he won for sound on Return of the King (though he worked on all three, and all three were nominated in his category; best sound mixing). He was able to provide some really interesting insider insights into the making of the movies. He does the tours in his off time because they’re fun, and – as he put it – an Oscar doesn’t come with cash.

Finally, we’ve commented that we’ve been going through some “Corgi withdrawal” – so imagine our surprise when at a stop along the way to Mt. Sunday we find this fellow waiting outside the coffee shop:

More pitures at LeosPictures.com.

Tomorrow: Rotorua.