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A Tolkien trail: Where to find the real-life Middle-earth

A Tolkien trail: Where to find the real-life Middle-earth

From the BBC
Daniel Stables
Find the article, with gorgeous photographs, here.
Getty Images Aerial view of Fiordland National Park, New Zealand (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images

While Tolkien’s stories take place in the fictional realm of Middle-earth, the awe-inspiring landscapes of the books, films and TV shows are closer than you might imagine.

The first book in J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, was released 70 years ago, in the summer of 1954. However, that’s not the only recent milestone for Tolkien’s legendarium: the second season of the epic TV series, The Rings of Power, was  released on 29 August 2024.

As befits the ultimate epic fantasy series, the settings are gorgeous, ranging from bucolic, rolling countryside to plunging valleys and desolate deserts. And while Tolkien’s stories take place in the fictional realm of Middle-earth, the awe-inspiring landscapes of the books, films and TV shows are not as otherworldly as you might imagine. Many of them are based on real-world locations and visiting them brings to life both the landscapes themselves and the imaginary worlds they inspired Tolkien to create.

The Tolkien Trail: Lancashire, England

While writing The Lord of the Rings in the 1940s, Tolkien lived for a while at Stonyhurst College, a prestigious boarding school in Lancashire where his son was a teacher. The elder Tolkien was known to walk often through the woodlands and rolling hills of the surrounding Ribble Valley, and is thought to have taken inspiration from the place while creating the Shire, the rural homeland of the hobbits.

Daniel Stables The seven-mile Tolkien Trail reveals how the writer was inspired by Lancashire’s beautiful landscapes (Credit: Daniel Stables)
The seven-mile Tolkien Trail reveals how the writer was inspired by Lancashire’s beautiful landscapes (Credit: Daniel Stables)

Today, fans can explore the area on the Tolkien Trail, which opened in 2002 and takes hikers through the very landscapes that inspired the author. The route starts in the village of Hurst Green at the atmospheric 17th-Century Shireburn Arms pub, where Tolkien was a regular. It then winds for around seven easy miles through undulating farmland, past the grand buildings of Stonyhurst College, and across historic landmarks like Cromwell’s Bridge, an overgrown packhorse bridge once used by Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War.

See the rest of this story, complete with gorgeous photographs of LotR sites. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240917-a-tolkien-trail-where-to-find-the-real-life-middle-earth

News items

J.R.R. Tolkien’s annotated map of Middle-earth has been discovered inside a copy of The Lord of the Rings.

Culled from today’s Montreal Gazette: J.R.R. Tolkien’s annotated map of Middle-earth has been discovered inside a copy of The Lord of the Rings.

JRRTAnnotations J.R.R. Tolkien made on a map of Middle-earth show his attention to detail. The map was found in Blackwell’s Rare Books in Oxford. It reveals the author’s observation that Hobbiton is on the same latitude as Oxford, and implies that the Italian city of Ravenna could have been the inspiration behind the fictional city of Minas Tirith.A specialist at Blackwell’s Rare Books found the map in a copy of The Lord of the Rings that had belonged to illustrator Pauline Baynes.

Baynes had removed the map from another edition of the novel as she began work on her own colour map of Middle-earth for Tolkien, which Allen & Unwin would publish in 1970. Bayne also created cover and inside illustrations for the Narnia books by Tolkien’s friend and colleague C.S. Lewis.

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When Baynes turned her hand to the map, Tolkien had then copiously annotated it in green ink and pencil, with Baynes adding her own notes to the document while she worked.

Blackwell’s, which is exhibiting the map in Oxford and selling it for about $121,000, said it is “an important document, and perhaps the finest piece of Tolkien ephemera to emerge in the last 20 years at least.” The bookshop said it demonstrates “the exacting nature” of Tolkien’s creative vision. He corrects place names, provides extra ones and gives Baynes a host of suggestions about the map’s flora and fauna.

Hobbiton, he notes, “is assumed to be approx. at latitude of Oxford.” Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University.

The novelist also uses Belgrade, Cyprus and Jerusalem as other reference points. Blackwell’s says this suggests “the city of Ravenna is the inspiration behind Minas Tirith — a key location in the third book of The Lord of The Rings trilogy.”

“The map shows how completely obsessed he was with the details. Anyone else interfered at their peril,” said Sian Wainwright at Blackwell’s.

Henry Gott, modern first editions specialist at Blackwell’s Rare Books, said the map was “an exciting and important discovery.”

Some links to other news sources, some with pictures of the map:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/23/jrr-tolkien-middle-earth-annotated-map-blackwells-lord-of-the-rings

http://time.com/4087650/tolkien-annotated-middle-earth-map-discovered/

http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine_books_blog/2015/10/found-tolkiens-annotated-map-of-middle-earth.phtml